Abstract

At a university in Melbourne, Australia, first-year preservice teachers were surveyed about their reading behaviours and attitudes. Many declared their dislike and disengagement from reading while simultaneously expressing the importance of successful reading for their future students. For these preservice teachers, the most important factor in their enjoyment was identified as being able to relate to what they were reading. If the texts were not immediately relatable then there was little incentive to keep reading. Their teacher-educators are passionate readers who believe that deep, nuanced reading is a prerequisite of reading pleasure and that reading fosters empathy and broadens human experience. It is incumbent on these teacher-educators to provide opportunities for preservice teachers to experience the effects of insightful reading on their literary and human understandings so that this, in turn, might inform and inspire similar classroom encounters for their young readers. Close readings of selected works by an award-winning Australian writer for young people demonstrate how such readings can be facilitated.