On a recent September afternoon, 30 or so 4th and 5th graders at Clayton, Mo.’s RM Captain Elementary gathered in the school library, lunches in tow. They listened raptly as Tom Bober, the school librarian, read aloud from Heroes, a novel set during the attack on Pearl Harbor that features two 13-year-old best friends who confront heady themes: Heroism. The loss of childhood innocence. Wartime prejudice.
Just as Bober came to a suspenseful scene, the daily 20-minute “lunch and listen” period ended.
“They all groaned that we were stopping,” Bober said.
Judging by the students’ response, it’s likely they’ll return to the library the next lunch period—and subsequent ones, until Bober finishes reading the book.
The daily lunch-and-listen period is optional, and draws anywhere from a handful to the majority of the school’s 4th and 5th graders depending on the popularity of the book. After he’s finished reading one book, he pauses for a few weeks before beginning another.
Bober also hosts rotating read-aloud sessions for 2nd and 3rd graders to accommodate their separate lunch periods.
These sessions are just one of several ways Bober and other school librarians throughout the Clayton school district work—often in tandem with classroom teachers—to create a culture of reading within their respective schools.
School libraries play a critical role in teaching and learning, said Milena Garganigo, the district’s assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. “Our focus on exposing students to rich literature and modeling how to talk about what we read has helped students to grow as readers,” she said.
The work in Clayton responds to a burgeoning concern among educators about reading. Simply put: Many students aren’t doing enough of it, and they appear less engaged or able to sustain interest in texts.
It is not a trend limited to youth: People of all ages are generally reading for pleasure less than ever. But for young people, the decline in the volume of reading likely is one of the factors that has contributed to a nationwide—and worldwide—slump in reading ability.
Many schools have worked to improve students’ ability to decode text over the last decade. But that doesn’t automatically translate into deep engagement in reading. That’s where building a culture of engagement in reading comes in, experts say.
... We're trying to answer this question in the classroom: Can every child read? And I think the question that librarians are trying to address is: Does every child want to read?
And while it doesn’t guarantee that all students will devote themselves to reading in their spare time, it does create habits among many.
“In our building, it’s part of our culture to prioritize making sure kids don’t just have the skills and the understanding of how the act of reading works, but that they love it. That they find books that they really connect with,” said Eileen McGaughey, the educational technology specialist and former 4th grade teacher at RM Captain Elementary, who partners with Bober to identify high-interest pleasure reading books for even reluctant readers.
Spreading a culture of reading through a school building
Literacy experts have long touted the importance of reading volume: Much research shows a link between how much they read and overall reading ability, in what amounts to a “Matthew effect” about reading, such that those who do more of it get better at it.
K-12 schools don’t control what happens outside of classrooms, which is one reason that schools have historically tried to emphasize pleasure reading. Research shows that it helps students not only become better readers, but is also linked to a slew of other important skills: improved language development, overall academic achievement, and even reduced symptoms of stress and behavioral problems.
“There’s a unique aspect to pleasure reading, especially fiction. It inspires us to leave our own perspective behind, and take on the thoughts and feelings of others,” said Maryanne Wolf, a literacy advocate and director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the UCLA Graduate School of Education. “Novels give us this unique extra set of windows on our world.”
At the same time, states are pushing to improve students’ reading proficiency levels by enacting legislation and pouring resources into supporting evidence-based literacy instruction. Subsequently, educators are doubling down on classroom instruction that emphasizes how to read. That’s an important goal, but as even reading experts have suggested, it can go too far: Kids need phonics but should be applying their knowledge to real texts as soon as possible.
There’s little empirical evidence to suggest how a return to basic skills has affected kids’ engagement in books, but anecdotally some teachers say they spend less time and attention on activities like read-alouds that set the stage for developing reading habits and exposing children to high-interest topics.
In the Clayton school district, librarians like Bober help to buck this trend, leaning into a number of strategies to create a culture of reading.
Among them: Maintaining a robust and current library collection, making routine exposure to pleasure reading a social experience, collaborating with teachers, and reaching out individually to reluctant readers.
“All of our students are guaranteed time in the library every week, and one thing that we do during a lot of those visits is share books and series that we think students are going to be interested in, so they’re not just blindly walking around 10,000 books, which is the size of our collection,” Bober said.
Bober strives to stay informed on the best new books in children’s literature and to give teachers access to this collection. Then he takes it a step further. “We have a [book] display in our library that is constantly evolving in our library, and includes selections from staff members across the entire building,” Bober said. It’s labeled: What are we reading right now?
The idea behind that display, said Bober, is this: “Hey, we’re all readers, and sometimes we’re reading textbooks, and sometimes we’re reading kid books, and sometimes we’re reading just a fun book, whatever it may be. But we’re all reading.”
The strategy works. Bober said students frequently tell him that they want to read the same book that their favorite teacher is reading.
Building a library collection—with student agency, reluctant readers at the forefront
Another way Bober has helped: Getting students involved in the creation of the school library’s collection.
“I have students who come to me and say, ‘We don’t have this book or this series’ or, ‘Are there more books by this author?’” said Bober. If a book isn’t available, he reaches out to local independent bookstores or other book providers to gain access to it.
Like many other school librarians, Bober serves as a resource for teachers who want to increase student engagement in pleasure reading but aren’t as familiar with the breadth of the library collection as he is.
“We were just two weeks into school and I had two of these conversations already, where a teacher will say to me, ‘Well, this student’s really struggling to pick out a book, finish books, find things that they like. They’re reading the same thing over and over again, and they’re not really sure what to do,’” Bober said.
And, he meets individually with such students who, for any number of reasons, are considered “reluctant readers.” Once he has a better sense of a student’s personal interests and reading level, he’ll spend time combing through the book collection and pull upwards of 10 books that may be of interest.
“When we meet a second time, I pitch those books. Basically, I’m a salesperson. I’m saying, ‘Hey, here’s what we have, but here’s also why I think it’s going to be perfect for you,’” Bober said.
Not every book will be a great fit, Bober acknowledged. But he hopes his efforts will get students closer to finding an author, or a series, that they’ll want to keep reading in their spare time. He also shares his strategies with the school’s teachers.
McGaughey says she has routinely leaned on Bober to help select high-interest books for individual students and offer strategies for when she’s stuck. For instance, he’s taught her to avoid generic inquiries like: What genre interests you? Instead, they can ask students more probing questions that offer clues about what hooks them on a book, such as: What books have you read that you liked?
These strategies can help boost students’ engagement in schoolwide practices like teacher read-alouds and independent reading periods, in which all grade levels participate. McGaughey acknowledges that tight instructional schedules sometimes make it difficult to preserve that time. “But if we have to, we’ll move things around in the schedule to protect it,” she said.
Funding matters for libraries and curriculum
Bober is in his 17th year as a librarian in the Clayton school district, which is relatively affluent and now has stable funding for its school libraries. That is not the case everywhere.
As the most recent 2026 report from the School Library Journal shows, library media center budgets vary widely, and are largely dependent on the overall financial health of the district. The report, which surveyed 820 school library representatives, found that 57% are operating with “unmet needs.” Overall spending per student declined 3 percent over last year, from $12.00 to $11.70.
Demographics play a role, with suburban schools reporting increases in their budgets and rural ones large decreases. In fact, 11.5 percent of rural school libraries reported having no library media center budget.
“What you clearly can see is districts that are high Title I, high minority, high poverty, the number of school librarians and the amount of funding provided to those schools for purchasing quality collections is significantly lower,” said April Dawkins, president of the American Association of School Librarians.
These shortages can have a negative, cascading effect on using libraries to leverage engagement in reading, Dawkins said. For instance, if a district splits a school librarian’s time between multiple schools, that librarian then has limited time to collaborate with building teachers, maintain up-to-date collections, provide creative programming, and learn what students want to read.
Even as many districts struggle to maintain adequate library resources that foster students’ interest in reading, resources aimed at boosting reading proficiency are growing nationwide.
Most states have enacted legislation in recent years mandating evidence-based approaches to early literacy instruction. These policies come with steep investments from states. California’s 2025-26 literacy budget, set at $480 million, included funding for literacy coaches, reading specialists, teacher training, and literacy screening. Pennsylvania’s 2025-26 budget allocated $10 million toward evidence-based literacy instruction and initiatives.
Funding for evidence-based reading instruction typically includes a new literacy curriculum, which supports students’ ability to learn the fundamentals of reading, like decoding. Not all of those series include high-interest trade novels, which generally have to be purchased separately.
Some librarians worry that the prescriptive nature of these curricula can make it difficult to provide differentiated instruction to meet the needs of individual students, Dawkins said. She contends it can also limit the time teachers have to collaborate with other staff members, like librarians.
“With all of these state [literacy] mandates, we’re trying to answer this question in the classroom: Can every child read?” Bober said. “And I think the question that librarians are trying to address is: Does every child want to read?”
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