What's Love Got to Do With Books?

What motivation research tells us about success, joy, reluctant readers, and falling in love

When I first started teaching, I heard often that my charge as a teacher was to help kids “fall in love with reading.” Not just on Valentine’s Day, but all year round.

This felt like both a mandate and a romantic flight of fancy. I understood the spirit behind it, but I also felt a quiet sense of dissonance. No one ever told me I needed to help students fall in love with handwriting. Or geography. Or learning how to use a planner.

But reading? Reading, apparently, stars in its own love story. Or it’s supposed to. But why?

That tension has stayed with me—because it hints at something deeper that I was hesitant to say out loud. What does love have to do with our theory of reading instruction?

Finding motivation

When this topic comes up, I typically find myself saying some version of this line:

Kids don’t have to love reading. But they do have to be able to do it.

That sometimes lands with relief—and sometimes with discomfort. It reflects a hard-earned truth: it’s difficult to love something you don’t do well. And it’s nearly impossible to get good at something without practice. How can students fall in love with reading if they don’t like practicing it?

I’ve seen this tension play out professionally—and at home. One of my children has always found reading easy and loves it; I constantly catch her curled up with a book. For my other child, learning to read was slower and more effortful, and he’ll tell you plainly that he wouldn’t describe his relationship with books as love. But through hard work and great teaching, he can read proficiently.

That has to be the top priority—not love, not joy, but proficiency. But I don’t think that means joyful experiences with books don’t matter. In fact, I’ve come to the opposite conclusion. While capability is the goal, joy acts as an enabling condition—shaping how much students read.

On whole books, volume and motivation

Recently, concerns have grown that students aren’t experiencing whole books in literacy instruction. Scholars like Timothy Shanahan have rightly noted that students can become proficient readers without reading full novels. Well-chosen excerpts, paired with strong instruction, can build decoding, fluency, vocabulary, knowledge, and ultimately comprehension. Whole books are not a prerequisite for learning to read well, and it’s important to say that plainly.

At the same time, practitioners like Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway, and Colleen Driggs of Teach Like a Champion argue for reading whole books together, noting that this experience offers something qualitatively different. Whole books can provide narrative arc, persistence, immersion, and the shared experience of sticking with something demanding.

We often treat these positions as mutually exclusive. But the more nuanced question isn’t whether students can learn from excerpts—it’s under what conditions they’ll read more. Zoom out, and something matters more than format: volume.

Decades of research suggest that when it comes to reading, volume matters—a lot. The more students read, the more vocabulary they develop, the more knowledge they build, and the more fluent and confident they become. Reading fuels reading.

Or as my coaching pals and I like to say, “if you want to get better, spend time with the ball.”

But volume isn’t always easy to achieve. Students who aren’t inclined to pick up a book don’t read simply because an adult tells them it’s important. But if they don’t regularly pick up a book, proficiency and ease will remain out of reach. How do we get around this chicken-and-egg problem?

This is where motivation research is helpful.

As folks like Cynthia Nebel and Carl Hendrick have noted, contrary to popular belief, motivation does not reliably precede success. More often, it’s the other way around: success precedes motivation. When learners experience success—when reading feels meaningful rather than punishing—they are more likely to persist and engage again.

I see this in classrooms all the time. When students experience themselves as capable readers, particularly with whole books, they gradually become more willing to take on increasingly complex, worthwhile texts. This is an important corrective, because the reality is that positive feelings about reading are more likely to develop after students have experienced success. (Btw, this isn’t just true in reading—I’ve watched many kids get their first hit in softball and immediately ask for more time in the batting cages.)

So how can we apply this insight in the classroom?

Experiencing success

I’ve seen success lead to motivation—and motivation lead to more reading—in classrooms around the country, and I’ve seen it with my own son.

Like many individuals, learning to read was genuinely hard for him. It took more effort and more support than it did for his peers. Even now, as a middle schooler, he’s self conscious that he reads more slowly than some of his friends. He is not a child who disappears into his room with a novel (he much prefers his mini-basketball hoop). Reading has required encouragement—and sometimes insistence—on my part.

But back in fourth grade, we hit a glorious turning point.

My son attends a fantastic school in Baltimore City that uses the Wit & Wisdom curriculum, which prioritizes students reading whole books together as a class. He read novels like Love That Dog and Hatchet with his classmates—books that unfolded chapter by chapter with teacher support, discussion, and shared purpose.

The shift was bigger than the books alone. It was the experience of reading them successfully, in community. He could keep up. He could contribute thoughtfully. Reading a lengthy, complex text felt satisfying in a new way. He shared his excitement with us at home and actively looked forward to class.

Then, he announced that he had (by choice!) joined his school’s Battle of the Books program, a national extracurricular competition in which students team up, read a set of novels, and answer detailed trivia questions. It’s part book club, part quiz show, and part team sport—which, in retrospect, may explain its appeal to a kid for whom athletics has always had massive appeal.

He teamed up with three friends. They divided books, read together, and quizzed one another. They argued (good-naturedly) about details. There was camaraderie and competition. And there was, for him, a powerful sense of belonging and, best of all, joy.

His volume of reading skyrocketed. He didn’t suddenly become a solitary bookworm, but he read far more than ever before—and with confidence built on shared success. His team didn’t win, but we celebrated anyway and the pride on his face was unforgettable. The next year, he signed up again.

Watching this unfold taught me something no research paper could: shared success can be a catalyst. When students, particularly those who have faced reading difficulties, experience the joy of meaty, complex books in communal settings—that experience can unlock motivation in a powerful way.

An unexpected love story

So… what does love have to do with reading?

Maybe not as much as we’re sometimes told. Love is a beautiful outcome, but it’s a shaky foundation. Proficiency has to come first. My son couldn’t have experienced joy in Battle of the Books without years of explicit instruction and deliberate practice that built his reading skills.

And yet—this is where the tension matters—joy isn’t incidental. The conditions under which proficiency grows matter enormously.

Successful, joyful experiences with whole books can increase motivation. Motivation can increase volume. And volume can strengthen the very capacities we care most about, for kids who might need the most help to get there.

Love may not start the story, and it may not be the goal. But it might help fuel the conditions that move more kids toward proficiency. Reading good books together may be one way we give that love a chance to grow.

A heated, joyful exchange during Battle of the Books

I’d love to hear how this tension shows up in your own work: where do love, motivation, and reading success intersect for your children or students?

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