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Introduction and a Spring Blessing​
Finally, spring has sprung! As we step into April, warm weather and spring reading are finally in season. By the end of this blog post, you’ll have some great novel suggestions to kick back and enjoy in the sun.
Spring Reading ​
As spring ramps up, the school year naturally comes to a close for most students and academics. However, the warm weather is the perfect time to continue expanding your knowledge and making recreational reading a routine.Â
Science-Based Data on the Benefits of Regular Reading
Surely, it may be tempting to relax after a stressful school year when spring comes around. However, reading during the summer has proven to yield significant benefits that can be advantageous once school starts again.Â
According to the scholarly article “Bridging the Summer Gap: A Scoping Review of the Literature on Summer Reading Programs,” reading during the summer
“help students maintain and even improve their reading skills, counteracting the typical summer learning loss.”
While spring reading programs exist, you can choose to read on your own. It has also been shown that in spring,
 “the typical student loses approximately one month of grade-equivalent skill or knowledge in combined math and reading achievement over the summer break.”
Instead of regression, choose a fun novel to continue your academic progress.
The Benefits:
- Improved language skills
- Sustaining knowledge and reading skills
- Expanding vocabulary
- Meanings
- Synonyms
- Antonyms
- Restores attention fatigue/slow attention span
- Explores word recognition skills
- Phonological and phonemic awareness decoding
- Sight word recognition
- Language-related skills
- Vocabulary
- Syntax and sentence structure
- Morphology
- Background knowledge
- Inferencing
- Improved reading/speech confidence
- Opportunities to identify and explain appropriate and inappropriate uses of given words
To find more benefits of reading, check out the blog post below!Â
Spring Novel Recommendations​
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past.
Emma by Jane Austen
Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others.
Spring romance is the perfect way to spend your free time after the stress of your academics crumbles away.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
With parallels to the enlightenment of the Buddha, Hesse’s Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmn’s quest for the ultimate reality. His quest takes him from the extremes of indulgent sensuality to the rigors of ascetism and self-denial.
Spring is about rebirth; therefore, take a step into your spiritual self and reflect through this psychological novel.
Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney
Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young–but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart.
Spring is an excellent time to revisit friendship or have loving flings. Romantise your life and immerse yourself in this exciting story!
Beloved by Toni Morrison​
What more could you possibly say regarding the brilliance that is Toni Morrison and this standalone classic? Spring can not only be magical but mystical.Â
Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
The Secret Garden by Frances Burnett
When you think of spring, you picture new growth, baby animals, blossoming flowers, and love. The Secret Garden has everything you need to encompass this time of year.
When orphaned Mary Lennox comes to live at her uncle’s great house on the Yorkshire Moors, she finds it full of secrets. The mansion has nearly one hundred rooms, and her uncle keeps himself locked up. And at night, she hears the sound of crying down one of the long corridors.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues.
Perhaps the most classic spring romances of all time, Austen writes a fictional novel with social commentary on the power dynamics of marriage.
The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Eighty four days pass, and still Santiago has not caught a fish in the familiar waters of the Gulf of Mexico north of his seacoast village in Cuba. Has old age robbed him of his once great skill? Is he just having bad luck? Will his scarred hands ever again pull in a prize catch?Â
Feel the warm spring sun with this exciting fishing story that plays with the theme of man vs. nature.
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
In the fantasies of spring travels, a ship’s surgeon, Lemuel Gulliver, makes a series of four expeditions. In Lilliput, he discovers a world in miniature. In Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation. In Laputa, a flying island, he encounters a society of speculators and projectors who have lost all grip on everyday reality. Finally, he reaches the land of the Houyhnhnms, gentle horses far superior to humans.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Having grown up an orphan in the home of her cruel aunt and at a harsh charity school, Jane Eyre becomes an independent and spirited survivor, qualities that serve her well as governess at Thornfield Hall, where she finds love with her sardonic employer, Rochester. A spring romance that truly encapsulates a slow-burning love.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Get into Spring Reading Conclusion
If spring is getting you restless to finally relax, make sure you continue your reading comprehension during your recreation time. The warm, spring weather, chirping birds, and the smell of fresh grass are the perfect environment to play into your imagination and read!
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