PENNY KITTLE

"I want to change the world. I want hundreds of Book Love Foundation libraries to be awarded each year. I want every teacher with the vision to transform reading to be given the resources to make it happen."

Penny Kittle is dedicated to helping students and teachers develop a passion for reading and writing.

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Penny teaches freshman composition at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She was a teacher and literacy coach in public schools for 34 years. In the summer Penny teaches at the Literacy Institutes at the University of New Hampshire.

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Penny stands on the shoulders of her mentors, the Dons (Murray & Graves), and the Toms (Newkirk & Romano), in her belief that intentional teaching in a reading and writing workshop brings the greatest student investment and learning in a classroom.

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Throughout the year, she travels across the U.S. and Canada (and once in awhile even farther) speaking to teachers about empowering students through independence in literacy. She believes in curiosity, engagement, and deep thinking in schools for both students and their teachers.

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Penny is the author of Book Love and Write Beside Them, which won the James N. Britton Award from NCTE. She co-edited Children Want to Write: Don Graves and the Revolution in Children's Writing with Tom Newkirk and co-authored two books on writing with mentor Don Graves. Most recently she co-authored 180 Days with Kelly Gallagher, a text used in teacher preparation programs throughout the United States.

She was a columnist for Voices from the Middle, an NCTE publication, for six years.

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Penny’s writing has been featured in ASCD’s Educational Leadership, The Colorado Reading Council Journal, The Manitoba ASCD Journal, The Journal of the Colorado Language Arts Society, California English, Scholastic, and Ohio State University’s Adolescent Literacy in Perspective Journal.

Penny has been honored with both the Exemplary Leader Award from the Conference on English Leadership through the National Council of Teachers of English and Thought Leader Award from the secondary section of the International Literacy Association.

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Penny earned her MAT in English and in Curriculum & Supervision from Lewis and Clark College.​

In 2012 Penny and her husband founded the Book Love Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation with one goal: to put books in the hands of teenagers.