How to Get Through Boring Summer Reading: Realistic Tips From a Middle School Teacher
Last week I met three of my former 7th grade students at the small coffee counter inside our town’s public library for our casual back-of-summer check-in. Mia slammed her assigned copy of The Red Badge of Courage down on the stained linoleum counter, blueberry muffin crumbs sticking to the frayed dust jacket. “Ms. Henderson, how do I force myself to read this?” she said, slumping against the counter. “It’s so boring I’d rather clean my little brother’s hamster cage. Twice.”
Javi nodded, pulling his own assigned book – a 300-page nonfiction text on westward expansion, spine cracked only once at page 12 – out of his backpack. “Same. I start reading, look up, and 10 minutes later I’m scrolling TikTok. I can’t make myself focus on something that doesn’t even care if I read it.”
I laughed, because I’ve been there. The summer I was 12, I was assigned Silas Marner for 8th grade prep. I stuffed it in the bottom of my beach bag, let it get coated in saltwater and sand, and didn’t open it until 8 p.m. the night before the first day of school. I crammed the whole thing in three hours, drank two root beers, and forgot 90% of the plot by the end of the first week of school. That’s when I figured out that forcing yourself to read a boring book doesn’t require superhuman willpower – it just requires small, low-effort tricks that don’t ask you to suddenly love something you hate.
First, I told them, throw out the idea that you have to enjoy this. The biggest lie we tell kids about summer reading is that every book is supposed to spark some kind of love of reading. If it’s boring, that’s not your fault. A lot of books written 150 years ago are boring to 12-year-olds. That’s just a fact. Your only job right now is to get through it, not write a college essay on how it changed your life.
Then, split it into tiny, fixed chunks, and tie each chunk to an immediate, small reward. I don’t mean a new video game when you finish the whole book – our brains don’t care about rewards that are weeks away. I mean a thing you want right now, that you only get when you finish your chunk. Mia loves sour watermelon candies, so I told her to put the whole bag out of reach, and only let herself have one candy after every 12 pages. Why 12? It’s a random, small number that doesn’t feel like a huge chore. 20 pages feels like a mountain; 12 feels like something you can knock out before your iced tea gets warm. When I crammed Silas Marner that night, I gave myself one chip after every 10 pages, and I got through the whole book way faster than I thought I would.
Next, you don’t have to read it at a quiet desk. I’ve had so many parents tell me their kid can only focus if it’s quiet, no distractions, at a clean work space. That’s garbage. If you can focus better with a reality show playing low in the background, read on the couch while your mom watches TV. If you’re already sitting for 20 minutes waiting for your dad to finish grilling dinner, bring the book and read your chunks there. Javi told me he always falls asleep when he reads at his desk after breakfast, so I told him to bring the book to his weekly family skate night, and read two chunks while he waits for his turn to use the scooter. Reading while you walk on a treadmill or sit on the bleachers watching your older sibling’s soccer practice works too. The environment doesn’t matter as long as you’re getting the words in.
I also told them it’s okay to skip the boring parts. So many kids get stuck on three-page descriptions of a field or a battle that doesn’t move the plot along, and they just close the book and don’t open it for a week. If a paragraph feels like filler, skip it. 99% of the time, the open-book quiz or book report at the start of the year isn’t going to ask you for details about the description of the forest. I skipped 8 whole pages of village description in Silas Marner, and I still got an A on my quiz. No one ever noticed.
If you’re still stuck, use the library’s free audio book and follow along with your physical book. A lot of parents email me worried this is cheating, but as a teacher, I don’t care. The point of summer reading is to keep you engaged with text over the break, not to torture you into staring at words you can’t get through. Following along with audio keeps your place, and turns the chore into something that feels a little more like listening to a story. Mia already checked out the audio for The Red Badge of Courage by the end of our check-in, and she said following along made the long battle scenes feel way less confusing.
By the end of our meeting, Mia had knocked out two 12-page chunks and eaten two sour candies, and she hadn’t complained once after we started talking through the tricks. Javi wrote the chunk idea down in his phone notes, and said he’d try it at Saturday’s cookout.
I still get emails from parents every July asking how to get their kid to enjoy their summer reading assignment. I tell them enjoyment doesn’t have to be the goal right now. Sometimes the task is just a task, and learning how to work through a boring thing one small step at a time is just as useful as falling in love with the book. I still have my original copy of Silas Marner on a shelf at home, sand still crammed in the spine and a faint popsicle stain on page 47. I’ve never re-read it, and I couldn’t tell you the main character’s motivation if you asked me today. But I got through it, that summer, and that was all that mattered.
Last I heard from Mia’s mom, she’s halfway done with the book, she’s gone through a whole bag of sour candies, and she still thinks The Red Badge of Courage is mind-numbingly boring. But she’s getting through it, which is more than she was two weeks ago. That’s enough, for now.
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