A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust: But books are so... enjoyable. Certainly students can't be learning anything from sitting around reading them all day.
I totally agree with allowing children to read what interests them! Back when I was young I hated reading, I struggled to get through books and didn't really want to try. Then I discovered The Sweet Valley High series. I don't know why I loved them so much, but they clicked for me and I would devour them. I would constantly go with my mom to our local used bookstore to see if they happened to have any more in stock (this is generally how I built my collection). Soon, you would find me with a book almost everywhere I went. Eventually I moved on from Sweet Valley, and I now read many genres, but I still attribute my current obsessive love of reading to that series. I read because I wanted to, and the books interested me. Fluff books created a life long reader who has read many of the classics by choice. It often takes simply finding what a child likes to read to light that spark inside of them! Three cheers for you and your Reading Workshop program!
Chris, I sort of had the opposite experience as you. When I was younger I devoured books from the time I could read my first words. I loved to read and always had a book with me - until I hit high school. Teacher-mandated reading of difficult classics that I barely understood sucked the life out of any sort of love I had for reading. That love was gone until I was about two years out of college when I finally decided to start taking up reading for pleasure again - this time on my own terms, by reading children's literature.
My own experience of being force-fed books that didn't meet my needs makes me even more insistent that more junior high and high school teachers start using a reading workshop approach so as not to kill the joy of reading out of any more students (and maybe even CREATE a love of reading in students who otherwise hated it before).