Children's Books discussion

Prompted by this exchange:

"Alex V wrote: "When I was in high school, I participated in Brave New World as a play, and I have to agree with you now in my 30s. It did push me a bit into a direction where I started to think too much out of the box. Read a bit too much into books of mystical nature and was a bit too open to new ideas. Not that this is completely negative, but it's a time when the more innocent books can be enjoyed for a bit longer in a more authentic experience...."

[I said] Thank you for this. I enjoyed my more innocent childhood and am thankful that progressive teachers didn't push me to read things that I wasn't ready for. My adult sons are more jaded and cynical, and I don't think it's good for them. I don't think it's good for society either, because we need idealistic youth and their energy and their big dreams to improve our world."

Alex was responding to an earlier comment which said that BNW does not belong on a list for "young readers."

On this list: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Thoughts?

(Remember to respect all opinions. If this topic is going to make you feel righteous, fretful, or angry, please be extra careful if you choose to post.)

We read all the classics in Junior High and High School. I was a very innocent girl and the classics didn't make me jaded and cynical. I didn't get the way until adulthood and not because of any fiction I read. I wouldn't recommend Brave New World to students below 8th or 9th grade more because they wouldn't find it interesting or easy to get through. I'll get back to you if I revise my opinion when my nieces and nephews are older.

What do you mean by classics? Madame Bovary? Ulysses? I'm guessing that's not quite what you're saying... but if you could name a few titles that would help us understand what you are actually saying,

Sure, I don't have a problem with books that were written for adults... in general. It's specific titles that could be on a recommended list but aren't necessarily the best fit for the enitre class that Alex and I are questioning. We read, for example, Tale of Two Cities. Not easy... but not as graphic about the violence and psychological abuse as BNW or some of the others that my sons read.

Cheryl wrote: "What do you mean by classics? Madame Bovary? Ulysses? I'm guessing that's not quite what you're saying... but if you could name a few titles that would help us understand what you are actually sayi..."

Yes. I was in advanced placement classes so we read the canon of dead white men. EVERYTHING! If my class didn't read it, another class did. If I don't remember it, it didn't make an impression. I had a few bad teachers along the way...

In Junior High we read a lot of Steinbeck The Red Pony (7th grade)
Of Mice and Men (8th grade- the other advanced class read To Kill a Mockingbird)
The Grapes of Wrath movie and discussion about dust bowl and Great Depression in science class, English class and social studies)

a lot of Dickens A Christmas Carol (7th grade), Great Expectations (9th grade-same teacher)

Shakespeare complete with bawdy jokes Twelfth Night (7th grade)

Inherit the Wind (8th grade social studies and English- we acted out the play)

Flowers for Algernon (7th or 9th? same teacher)

The Odyssey (7th grade)

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (I think 7th)
obviously my 7th/9th grade teacher made the most impression on me.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

High school
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Excerpts from
Beowulf
Dante Alighieri
The Canterbury Tales
The Lliad
I THINK Oedipus Rex. I know we covered the ancient Greeks and went to see Mourning Becomes Electra

French class in high school we covered the classics in French
Candide
Molière- I don't remember which play but we went to see one at another high school. The school stands out in my memory but not the play.
Becket: Or, The Honour of God by Jean Anouilh Summary & Study Guide

excerpts from
Madame Bovary
Les Miserables (we gave up and watched a mini-series adaptation and we all ended up going to see the musical with our parents anyway)
possibly François Rabelais because Pantagruel sounds familiar

in Spanish class I didn't get far enough to read IN Spanish but we discussed
Don Quixote and went to see a play

I also remember reading other classics like
The Necklace
Edgar Allen Poet
Wuthering Heights
The Prince
Animal Farm
Lord of the Flies (at least the movie but I think both book and movie . I distinctly remember a substitute teacher in 8th grade showing us the movie and everyone giving the teacher a hard time).
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
East of Eden (10th grade)

The great American (male) writers... I believe 8th and 10th may have covered that canon. I only recall a few ... excerpts from Nathaniel Hawthorne but curiously not The Scarlet Letter.
Ralph Waldo Emerson "The Nautilus"
Leaves of Grass
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Jack London
possibly The Old Man and the Sea
Robert Frost

I did a college summer program at Ivy League University near me in junior high and had summer reading book reports to do.

I believe we had to read... but there was a lot of overlap in college
Invisible Man
Black Like Me
The Metamorphosis

A few dead white women
MY ANTONIA (10th grade)
Wuthering Heights (12th grade)

etc. etc. etc.! We were never restricted and often read books that have been banned/challenged in other schools. I appreciate my English teachers a lot. When I majored in literature in college there was a lot of overlap.

We read a lot of classic literature at school but also did a term in grade eight on British and American spy and mystery novels (some were not to my tastes but I got my love for Rex Stout, Josephine Tey and John D. McDonald from the books we had to read for this project). Also read the King James Bible as literature in grades seven and eight (OT in grade seven, NT in grade eight, and no we read this as literature and not as religious dogma). Read one Shakespeare play a year from grades seven to twelve (Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, MacBeth, King Henry IV parts one and two, Hamlet). Read How Green Was My Valley and Cry the Beloved Country in grade nine, an anthology of British Literature in grade ten from Beowulf to poets like A.E. Houseman, Thomas Hardy etc., Canadian literature in grade ten (at least fifteen generally wonderful novels) and world literature in grade twelve. And the only piece of literature that I truly despised and thought unsuitable for us as young teenagers was having to read Dickens’ Bleak House in grade eight as the book was way too long, too boring and two convolutedly written for readers aged around thirteen or so (Oliver Twist would have been both better and more interesting and having had to read Bleak House in grade eight really did sour me on Charles Dickens in general).

QNPoohBear wrote: "Cheryl wrote: "What do you mean by classics? Madame Bovary? Ulysses? I'm guessing that's not quite what you're saying... but if you could name a few titles that would help us understand what you ar..."

You were lucky to have gotten French literature during French class. I was massively bored with and by the simplistic short stories we read during class (and this was supposedly advanced) until grade twelve when we finally were reading some French Canadian plays and Le Petit Prince. We actually used to sit in the back of the class and play D and D (in French) with the teacher letting us because she knew how simplistic the prescribed textbook was.

I will say though that I am VERY GLAD that we did not do the Canadian literature year in English class until grade eleven, as while I very much enjoyed novels like Frederick Philip Grove’s Settlers on the Marsh, Hugh McLennan’s Two Solitudes, Margret Lawrence’s The Stone Angel and W.O. Mitchell’s How I Spent my Summer Holidays at age seventeen, if we had read these books earlier, many of the themes would have been or could have been heavy duty and painful.

QNPoohBear wrote: "When I majored in literature in college there was a lot of overlap..."

So, I read here the implication that you had an atypical experience, and that many of these texts were considered as a better fit for older students. I'm glad you didn't encounter any that you couldn't handle.

The ones I remember reading as school assignments:
Lord of the Flies (don't remember which year)

Freshman high school:
Our teacher read us "The Open Window" by Saki; I don't remember if she read us other stories by him, but that one sticks out and turned me on to Saki, so that I searched out other stories by him. Now own a complete works of Saki.
Great Expectations by Dickens (turned me off Dickens)

I do not remember at all what I had to read as a sophomore or junior.

Senior high school:
Charles Dickens: Hard Times (turned me off Dickens forever)
Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)
MacBeth (Shakespeare)
The Brothers Karamazov

In German class, maybe senior year:
Siddhartha
The Metamorphosis

After perusing the lists above, I remembered that I also had to read:
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
White Fang
stories by Edgar Allan Poe
selected Canterbury Tales
maybe I read these during sophomore or junior years.

I still have only read (reread) A Christmas Carol. I love it, and I should try something else by Dickens. Not HT or GE or BH though, I think!

Well, I do like A Christmas Carol, at least in the live and animated performances that I have seen.

Manybooks wrote: "You were lucky to have gotten French literature during French class. I was massively bored with and by the simplistic short stories we read during class (and this was supposedly advanced) until grade twelve when we finally were reading some French Canadian plays and Le Petit Prince. We actually used to sit in the back of the class and play D and D (in French) with the teacher letting us because she knew how simplistic the prescribed textbook was.
"

The textbook WAS lame. I can't say I ever learned how to speak French but I could read old French quite well. Senior year we took Honors French for college credit and we only signed up for it to keep our teacher in a job. Our school required 5 years of a foreign language starting in 8th grade so 12th grade was technically optional. The teacher read with us and translated as we went along. She laughed and laughed at Candide and left us wondering what was so funny.

I had a standard honors/AP education for my school system in the 90s. I wouldn't say it was aytpical just standard college prep. I don't know how it compares to the private schools in the area. We mixed up the textbook with actual books. The only things I remember being really tough to get through in grade school were Flowers for Algernon because it was sad and in high school maybe East of Eden. We didn't understand the dirty jokes in Shakespeare even after the teacher explained them. He laughed a lot at the jokes in the play we saw and we laughed at our teacher turning red laughing. I don't recall anything being traumatic or upsetting until the teacher printed out an article on this new thing called the "Information Superhighway" and the "world wide web". Now THAT was scary LOL!

I am curious to see how my niece and nephew's education will compare in a few years in the same school system. Old dead white men are no longer as popular so I hope they read some different books along with the classics.

Did any of you read On the Beach for high school or college? When I (re)read it I did so because I remembered liking it... but it seemed totally unfamiliar.... Good book for adults, though!

Cheryl wrote: "I still have only read (reread) A Christmas Carol. I love it, and I should try something else by Dickens. Not HT or GE or BH though, I think!"

I would try Oliver Twist and I would definitely not recommend Bleak House.

ty

Cheryl wrote: "ty"

I hope you find Oliver Twist readable. I have so far found it the only Dickens novel that was somewhat interesting. Many do seem to love Dickens as an author but like Beverly, I was also really turned off of Charles Dickens by having to read him at school, Bleak House in grade eight for me really was a massively tedious slog for thirteen and fourteen year olds, just like Hard Times seems to have done the same for Beverly.

Beverly wrote: "The ones I remember reading as school assignments:
Lord of the Flies (don't remember which year)

Freshman high school:
Our teacher read us "The Open Window" by Saki; I..."

And for me Bleak House turned me off Dickens!