Reading The Hunger Games with Kate

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I have a master’s degree and a doctorate in education, though no specialized training in special education. Still, I have long been fascinated by how children learn—especially how they learn to read.

Recently, I had the opportunity to read The Hunger Games with Kate, a homeschooled seventh grader who has struggled with reading for years. I suggested we read together, thinking it might be both enjoyable and helpful for her to spend time reading with someone outside her home. She agreed.

What I didn’t anticipate was how much I would learn.

I’ve watched my own children learn to read. I’ve watched grandchildren do the same. I’ve taught classrooms full of fourth graders. But in a classroom of sixteen to twenty-six students, it’s nearly impossible to deeply understand the internal reading process of any one child. Reading with Kate, one-on-one, allowed me to immerse myself in the experience of a “struggling” reader in a way I never had before.

We sat on my couch and took turns reading a page, usually completing a chapter a day. At first, she seemed nervous and stumbled more than she might normally. Even after we settled into a rhythm—and she realized I wasn’t judging or grading her—she continued to struggle.

What surprised me most was her speed. I would have expected a cautious reader to slow down, but Kate read very quickly. She often skipped words. Sometimes she substituted a simpler word for a more complex one—“tired” for “fatigued,” for example—which suggested she grasped the meaning. Other times, she simply omitted words altogether.

Even more striking was her approach to punctuation. She didn’t pause at periods. Instead, she read until she literally ran out of breath, stopping mid-sentence. When I asked her about it, she said plainly, “I read until I run out of breath.” That explanation clarified a great deal. Of course I suggested trying to pause at periods—but habits, especially ingrained ones, are difficult to change.

Line breaks posed another challenge. When a word was divided by a hyphen at the end of a line, she struggled to carry it over to the next line—even when it was a word she knew well.

When it was my turn to read, I used expression and tone. She told me she didn’t like to read that way. It embarrassed her. I understood. I remember feeling the same discomfort reading aloud when I was young.

Yet for all the awkwardness in her oral reading, Kate frequently stopped to comment on the story. And we both loved the story. Her comments revealed real engagement: reactions to events, opinions about characters, predictions about what might happen next. From those conversations, I saw clear evidence of comprehension.

She was also willing to tackle unfamiliar words. The vocabulary in The Hunger Games is not simple, yet she recognized many challenging words and worked through others using phonics. We often paused to talk about vocabulary. She had strong opinions about the author’s word choices and sometimes argued that simpler words would have sufficed. We laughed about that together.

Over time, both my partner—a retired senior English teacher who was often home while we read—and I noticed improvement. But what mattered most was that Kate noticed it. After one later chapter, she said, “I’m getting better.” She was right. She still stumbled occasionally—but then, so did I.

One of my lasting reflections from this experience is how singular each child’s reading journey is. Kate’s specific habits—reading for breath instead of punctuation, racing through text, stumbling over hyphenated words—feel so uniquely hers. It is difficult to imagine that any generalized “science of reading” experiment could fully account for the particular combination of strengths and challenges she brings to the page.

I suspect that much of her growth came not from technique alone but from investment. She loved the book. She loved the story. And I did too. Sharing that enthusiasm mattered. Reading something you care about—something you are eager to discuss—makes the effort feel worthwhile.

Spending that time with Kate reminded me that learning to read is not simply a technical skill to be mastered. It is a deeply personal, situated process—shaped by interest, habit, confidence, and relationship.

And sometimes, by a good book and a willing companion on the couch.