What Makes Reading Fun? The Answer is Critical to Building Literacy Skills

What makes reading fun? Is it starting a new book in a beloved series? Identifying deeply with a character’s experience? Reading on the beach or jogging while listening to an audiobook?

Experienced readers know what they like as a reader and what conditions make reading enjoyable. However, many children have yet to discover what makes reading relevant and engaging for them. 

Given that research has linked reading identity and self-efficacy and confidence to accelerated literacy growth for Black, Latino, and Native American students, Barbershop Books’ has developed a tool to equip students in grades PK-3 with vocabulary and world knowledge to better understand and articulate their reading preferences. Reading So Lit is a tech-enabled learning personalization platform that helps young people find their reading identity while empowering  teachers and families with actionable, student-generated insights to support personalized reading content and experiences in school and at home.

Through multimedia-based whole group instruction, gamified literacy explorations, and embedded assessments, Reading So Lit builds a personalized “Reading Identity Profile” summarizing each student's preferred reading content, conditions, and modalities. With this strengths-based data, students, teachers, and families can curate content and create conditions that bolster reading identity development, confidence, motivation, and agency, key social-emotional drivers of literacy success.

Since Reading So Lit is a first-of-its-kind reading identity tool, Barbershop Books turned to a community of educators, families, and researchers to inform its development. In 2023, Barbershop Books joined the Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL)’s Tech-Powered Family Partnership Accelerator, a collaborative of New York City-based schools, school systems, and community-based organizations devising, testing, and improving models that use technology to strengthen the connection between families and educators. Out of an iterative, co-design process, Reading So Lit was born. 

In the summer of 2024, Barbershop Books and CPRL piloted the platform with about 40 students and their caregivers and saw promising early results: Ninety-three percent of participating students reported a positive attitude towards reading after the program, and 80 percent identified as readers. Seventy-three percent of their caregivers said the program made them more confident in selecting books for their children. “The program exposed my son to different books he wasn’t familiar with before the program,” one parent said. Another parent noted that the program built her child’s habit of reading and he now maintains designated reading time at home. 

To gather additional feedback, Barbershop Books partnered with researchers at LeanLab Education to pilot the platform in eight classrooms last spring. Teachers found that Reading So Lit aligned with their instructional goals and reported that participating students showed increased reading motivation. As one teacher put it, “The program really personalizes reading for students. It does what I cannot do. It makes students think about reading in a way that makes it seem fun.”

Reading So Lit has received some early recognition including winning the Tools Competition’s 2023 Catalyst Award for Assessment and selection for New Schools Venture Fund’s Learning Solutions of 2024.  

Barbershop Books founder Alvin Irby sees building young people’s reading motivation, confidence, and agency as a critical accompaniment to developing foundational literacy skills like vocabulary and knowledge development. “If kids aren’t reading outside of school, the gains achieved from effective literacy instruction, interventions, and tutoring will be less sticky,” Irby said. 

Barbershop Books is currently onboarding additional schools to pilot Reading So Lit in the 2025-2026 school year to gain a deeper understanding of how teachers and families can use Reading Identity Profiles to strengthen literacy support in school and at home. 

To learn more, see a demo, or explore a pilot partnership, contact Reading So Lit.