Adumbrationism and the Book Whisperer

There are 222 reviews of the Donalyn Miller's terrific Book Whisperer on Amazon.

182 gave it a "5"

31 gave it a "4"

8 gave it a "3"

Nobody gave it a 2

And HH gave it a 1

Here is HH's review, followed by my comment, also posted on Amazon.

Save yourself some time, March 16, 2014

By  HH.

"Great for novice teachers or anyone needing a refresher but more or less a culmination of every reading course, workshop or book about teaching reading ever written. The gist: students need time to read and teachers must be avid and passionate readers. It could have been said in those two sentence. I would recommend this book to non-traditional teachers."

My response, posted on amazon.

I included my real name.

H.H. is guilty of adumbrationism, "denegrating of new ideas by pretending to find them old" (Merton, 1961).  The Book Whisperer has introduced the concept of constrained self-selected reading, the missing factor in literature teaching. It is also a big part of the answer to intermediate second and foreign language teaching.  H.H. may have known about this all along, but I didn't, and neither did thousands of readers of the Book Whisperer who now find teaching literature to be much more satisfying and exciting.  I predict that research will show that the students appreciate it and profit from it as well.

Merton, R. K. 1961. Singletons and multiples in scientific discovery: A chapter in the sociology of science. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 105: 470-486.