Or so my kids will tell you today. The evidence? When we went to the library, I made them check out one non-fiction book and--this is the kicker--one fiction book that is outside their usual reading habits (specifically, a book without talking animals, wizards, fairies, dragons, magic, or space travel).
Shock. Horror. Scandal.
Someone call Amnesty International.
NB, my future lawyer or perhaps judge, had to ask me about every possible exception.
"Does Warriors count? The animals don't talk to humans."
"But, Mom, Dragonslayers Academy is outside my usual reading habits. I almost never read them."
From looking at the library shelves, it appears my kids are not the only ones who only read fantasy or science fiction. It was really rather challenging to find non-depressing, age-appropriate books at their reading level that met my criteria. In the end, I'm not entirely sure we succeeded. NB's book is The Incredible Journey, which is about animals, but they don't seem to talk. EM's book is The Book Thief, which is narrated by Death, but other than that seems to be about a Jewish girl in Nazi Germany. IM got The Pushcart War, about which I know nothing except that it seems to take place among humans in New York City.
I'll let you know how they like them.
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2 comments:
I read an exerpt from the Pushcart War. (It was part of one of those elementary grade readers where they don't put the whole book in, just a chapter or a minor story arc.) I don't remember much other than it seemed to be about cooperation and that was the moral we were supposed to duly extract from the exerpt.
I also read the Incredible Journey....once.
The stuff outside of fantasy can be a bit troublesome, as there was this really strong trend to have kids and young adults reading stories with morals, and kinda rightly, when you hammer the kid with the message, the story gets boring. And as much value as the original Bridge to Terabithia had, I remember it spawned some really awful stories which were all about kids getting killed in various ways and the surviving kids deal with it. I got hit with a stack of those one year and hated them all. Ditto for all the stories about kid discovers friend using drugs, and one of the kids ends up dead. (I think it's an important topic, but very few writers have succeeded in discussing it without getting preachy or pedantic.)
Have your kids discovered Gordon Korman yet? I predict IM and NB will love the MacDonald Hall books, and EM might enjoy Son of Interflux and I Want To Go Home. (Gordon Korman's first MacDonald Hall book was written when he was 12 or 13.)
Also fondly remembered: The Mad Scientist's Club. And the Alvin books (Alvin's Secret Code and The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald). Elizabeth Enright's Gone Away Lake. Harriet the Spy. Homer Fink. And then the kid mysteries, Encyclopedia Brown. Trixie Beldon. The Three Investigators.
Tell EM that The Book Thief was one of my favorite reads last year!
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