Finding a Good Hook Book: Lucha Libre

This summer, I wrote a guest blog for Krista over at The Second Grade Superkids about the importance of native language instruction.  I wrote about a student named Jose and his journey towards biliteracy.

Last week, I was at my lovely new public library just bursting with shelves of BRAND NEW BILINGUAL books and I came across this book that reminded me of Jose.


As I was in the process of convincing Jose that he could and would learn to read, I was also trying to figure out what types of books he would want to read.  I needed some hook books!  The kind that he would find worthy of his perseverance and diligence.  The kind that would create that special magic where motivation plus emerging ability equates to an ability to read a book higher than his instructional reading level.

I questioned Jose to find his hook.  Dinosaurs?  Outer space?  Sports?  Nothing created the magic...until I overheard him at recess talking about watching WWF and Lucha Libre and noticed his RIP Eddie Guerrero t-shirt.

At the time, I couldn't find any books about wrestling in Spanish at our school library but I did find some info in Spanish online.  When I shared it with Jose and told him he could read it during self-selected reading time, he was thrilled.  It was way above his reading level but he sought out another student to read with him.  It was just the hook I needed!

So, when I saw Lucha libre: The Man in the Silver Mask, A Bilingual Cuento by Xavier Garza, it made me think that there might be some more Joses out there in your class that could use a hook to pull them further into the magic of reading.

What are your other favorite hook book topics?