My Books

I write the books I wish I had when I was trying to build something different inside systems that often push for compliance, speed, and control.

Each book is grounded in daily classroom practice and shaped by the students who continue to challenge my thinking. They are not scripts or programs. They are invitations to reflect, rethink, and rebuild learning environments that center identity, trust, and meaningful literacy.

In a time when educators are navigating AI, declining reading engagement, increasing behavior challenges, curriculum mandates, and exhaustion, my books focus on what we can still control: our classroom culture, our literacy practices, and our relationships with students.

 

Passionate Learners (3rd Edition): How to Engage and Empower Your Students

Now in its third edition, Passionate Learners revisits the question that still feels urgent:
Would you want to be a student in your own classroom?

This book explores how small, intentional shifts in grading, homework, classroom management, and student voice can transform a classroom from compliance-driven to curiosity-driven — even within mandated systems.

If you are navigating:

• Over-standardization
• Student disengagement
• Behavior systems that don’t sit right with you
• The tension between autonomy and accountability

This book offers reflection, classroom-tested changes, and honest storytelling from a teacher who learned alongside her students.

A Review:

In a time when much of education is dictated by curriculum standards and mandated behavior management programs, Pernille offers a fresh perspective on what learning is like from the student perspective. From her asking the question, “would you like being a student in your own classroom?” to her ideas about grading and homework, she offers a vision of truly student-centered education. She does not offer a method or a step-by-step guide to changing one’s teaching. Instead, she empowers teachers to reflect on their experiences, on research, and on their current level of comfort with innovation. After this reflection, teachers are ready to use Pernille’s ideas as a springboard to transform their own classrooms into ones that are truly student-centered.

To order this book, click here

Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child

We are not just facing a reading skills crisis — we are facing a reading identity crisis.

In a world of AI-generated summaries, shrinking attention spans, and increasing pressure to accelerate instruction, many students are losing the opportunity to see themselves as readers. Programs promise quick fixes. Data promises clarity. Yet disengagement continues to grow.

Passionate Readers asks a different question:
What if the key to stronger readers is not more control, but more ownership?

Grounded in classroom practice, this book explores how to build reading communities centered on access, choice, classroom libraries, conferring, and student reading identity. It challenges the idea that curriculum alone creates readers and instead focuses on the conditions that allow reading to matter.

Inside, you’ll explore:

• How your own reading identity shapes your instruction
• How to design a classroom environment that invites reading rather than mandates it
• How to build and maintain a classroom library that students actually use
• How to confer in ways that deepen identity, not just assess progress
• How to support resistant and disengaged readers without shame

This book is for educators who are watching reading joy decline and refuse to accept that as inevitable.

Because readers are not built through compliance — they are nurtured through connection.

To order this book, click here

The official study guide can be found here

 

Reimagining Literacy through Global Collaboration

In an increasingly polarized and fast-moving world, students need more than isolated classroom assignments. They need authentic audiences. They need connection. They need to see that their words matter beyond the walls of school.

Reimagining Literacy Through Global Collaboration explores how global projects can deepen literacy while building empathy, perspective, and purpose. Drawing on my experience founding the Global Read Aloud and years of cross-border classroom work, this book outlines what meaningful global collaboration actually looks like — beyond surface-level cultural exchanges or one-off virtual meetings.

Inside, you’ll explore:

• What makes collaboration truly authentic rather than performative
• How to design literacy experiences aimed at real audiences
• Ways to build global connections without expensive tools or complex tech
• How global work strengthens writing, reading comprehension, and critical thinking

At a time when students are flooded with information yet increasingly disconnected from one another, global literacy experiences help them move from passive consumers to thoughtful contributors.

A Review:

I highly recommend reading Pernille Ripp’s book if you want to get practical advice for how to help your kids learn from a global perspective. I feel ready and motivated to choose the path that is right for me and for my students so that I can be successful in making my students more aware of the world around them and the kids who live all over the world. One of the best things about this book is that Ripp doesn’t say you need to buy tons of technology, in fact it’s the opposite. She insists it can be done with merely one device, if that’s all you’ve got. The key is relationship building–in your classroom and across the world.

To order your copy, please go here.

Empowered Schools, Empowered Students

What happens when empowerment is not just a classroom philosophy, but a school-wide commitment?

In systems where initiative fatigue, top-down mandates, and staff burnout are common, this book explores how schools can move from compliance-driven structures to cultures rooted in shared leadership, trust, and collective responsibility.

This book speaks to both teachers and administrators who are asking:

• How do we create environments where both adults and students feel invested?
• How do we cultivate voice without losing coherence?
• How do we move from control to collaboration in sustainable ways?

Through practical examples and reflective questions, Empowered Schools, Empowered Students examines how shifting power — thoughtfully and intentionally — can strengthen both adult learning and student agency.

Because when adults feel empowered, students do too.

To order your copy, please go here.