The Heart of Fiction: Reading for Character, Theme and Craft

By Kate Roberts

Reading fiction is at the heart of our classrooms.

It's what we love. It's what we want our students to love--whether whole class novels, book club texts, or independent choices. But to love fiction, kids need to be able to and hopefully want to read without our constant guidance and instruction. How can we coach students towards more proficient, independent practice when they read?

Kate Roberts offers strategies to teach the skills students need to confidently analyze character, theme, and craft--strategies they can repeatedly practice across time and texts. Since reading strategies alone don't help teachers or students understand the "why" and "how," each strategy is anchored by: Two-page Essays in which Kate describes her thinking about the strategy and explores the human connection to it. Why does this strategy matter? How does this strategy connect to ways we can think about our own lives? Lessons that offer step-by-step ideas for teaching the skills and strategies in ways that make sense to kids. Examples of student work and ideas for feedback bring the lessons to life, while templates, tools, and graphic organizers make teaching them that much easier.

The Heart of Fiction is about more than skill building. It's also about the conditions we can set up in our teaching to make this work stick, and for our students to truly grow into themselves as readers. It's about the lifeblood of our classrooms.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 104115688X
• ISBN13: 9781041156888
• Release Date: December 2025
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 224 Pages