Welcome to Enliven Lit! I wanted to use this first blog post to share some insight about why I started this company.

As an educator, I have noticed an emerging and worsening trend over the last few years which includes recent high school grads having what seems to be much lower literacy levels than I previously was accustomed to. In practical terms, what did this look like?

• Difficulty accurately summarizing a text without assistance
• Inability to “read between the lines”
• Lower comprehension of themes and big ideas
• Struggling with vocabulary and historical contexts
• Reluctance to read anything longer than just a few pages

Recently, students have been turning to AI. While some AI tools can be legitimately helpful study assistants, the tendency I have seen is for students to use AI to do the work of analyzing and interpreting literature for them. This results in students who are losing the ability to do this kind of critical thinking themselves. This has troubling implications not only for their future in education, but for how they will move forward as learners, thinkers, workers, and citizens.

Enliven Lit recognizes that this is a problem that requires early intervention. Kids and youth who love literature are more likely to be lifelong readers. People who have the ability to read deeply can engage with ideas that are new or challenging to them. They have the skills needed to analyze and interpret, which put simply, makes them smarter.

Thus, Enliven Lit was created to try to make a meaningful difference. We want to see kids and youth (and adults!) be excited to read. We want them to understand how valuable this skill is, and why it should be nurtured. So whether it takes a social approach with our facilitated book clubs, or a more explicitly educational one with individual novel studies, our educators aim to cultivate reading enjoyment and enrichment.