"Mrs. Schulz, I've already read this book!!!"

Being an English teacher, I have the great privilege of reading the same novels dozens of times, over and over. I believe there is great value in reading novels multiple times, especially with several years in between each read. With each new reading of a novel, I find that I notice something my brain has not maintained in previous readings. For example, when I read The Pearl now, as a mother, my heart aches for Juana in a way it never did before when Coyotito is killed. When I first read Romeo and Juliet as a 9th grader, I was drawn to the excitement of "love at first sight", but I completely missed the warnings and cautions given by Friar Lawrence to the impulsive youth. Every time I pick up a novel for the fifth, sixth, seventh time, I greet the familiar characters and ask them what they have to offer me this time around; I look forward to what they will reveal to me.

Over the many years that I have taught high school English, I cannot begin to guess as to how many times I have heard students complain that they have already read the novel that I have assigned to their class. It's always somewhat amusing to hear, for example, a sophomore in high school tell me that they already read To Kill A Mockingbird when they were in 6th grade, as if somehow in all of their 12-year-old-wisdom, they have already grasped every symbol, allusion, and nuance. The thing is, I am not assigning a sophomore in high school to read To Kill A Mockingbird because I believe that a 15-year-old's wisdom is so much more profound than that of a 12-year-old.......

So why do high school English teachers assign literature that has so many levels of depth that a single reading cannot possibly unveil all of the complexities? My true hope is that when students read a novel, they will be so captivated by the story that they will perhaps remember (possibly even years later, after all of the "assigned" reading is done) how they felt when they became friends with Scout, or Holden, or Huck, and open the pages of that book once again and rather than think, wait, I already read this book, they will think, this book is one of my favorites, and allow the story to transport them to a different time, a different place.

So to my wonderful Advanced Composition class, my response to you if you have already read this book is - That's great! Now read it again. And in a few years read it again. And again.