The Child Reading Dilemma Thread

[El Diablo]

HT,

Madeleine L'Engle
Judy Blume
Encyclopedia Brown
Choose your own adventure (in retrospect, these books were really crappy)

Off the top of my head, those were my favorite elementary school books.

Probably slightly more advanced than those would be Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Tolkien. A lot of those books are pretty mentally stimulating.

[Aloysius]

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You're thinking of The Book Of Three etc. etc. -- the Alexander books are great choices, thanks.

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Must re-quote for other parents coming up with reading lists. Incredibly absorbing (in a good way) and elegant writing IIRC. I enjoyed them more, as a kid, than Tolkien and others in the fantasy genre.

Howard:

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Also, don't underestimate the power of non-fiction.

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I can not remember the name, but it was a series of biographies broken out by profession (e.g. medicine, politics, etc.) geared towards pre-teens. Thinking you could find some good equivalent on Amazon pretty easily. In general, I think biographies might be a good entry-point for learning about U.S. and world history, it certainly was for me as a child.

-Al

[edtost]

as for good examples for books for the kids, a lot have been touched on already, but i have a couple of things i can add in:

for tolkien, the hobbit will be enjoyable for them earlier on than the LoTR series.

"the giver" by lois lowry was something i remember enjoying a lot as a kid. i also remember reading things like whatever the popular grisham or whoever novels were at the time; authors like that really write on a pretty low level as far as making the story comprehensible.

as far as what the proper parental limits for reading on children who mechanically can read well past their maturity level are, that obviously something you'll have to figure out on your own, but i feel like i've turned out pretty well and was a fairly voracious reader as a little kid, so i'll share how my parents handled it. up until sometime around middle school, getting new books was never really something i was left alone to do - while they'd take me to the library or bookstore pretty much whenever i needed new books, i was never left alone to wander (i guess to avoid something like your cocktail-table book incident). but though i always remember someone being with me, and i guess they made suggestions or steered me toward sections or whatever, i never remember wanting a book that they wouldn't let me read.

[samjjones]

I also got into Baum's "The Wizard Of Oz" series and Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series when I was in like 3rd/4th grade.

And the Choose Your Own Adventure books were awesome.

[king_of_drafts]

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Choose your own adventure (in retrospect, these books were reallyawesome )

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fyp

[Kimbell175113]

I was like this, too, and I ended up reading all kinds of stuff because my parents were not really readers and didn't really know anything about what to steer me towards or away from. Still ended up liking the same things El D and others have recommended, btw.

Now I have some younger siblings (5 and 8, I'm 19), and I'm wondering whether it's a good thing that they have me. I mean, I can hand them all the good stuff, but will it be less special than if they had found it themselves? Will their own tastes not develop if I only show them books that fit mine?

[jeffnc]

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and man, that traumatized me sufficiently that I remember the picture even now. I kinda wish now that my parents would have tactfully directed my attention away from that particular volume.

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Two comments on that: first, if they said you shouldn't look at it, you'd be dying to look at it. Second, it's pretty hard to know what one person will find
"traumatizing" and remember for a long time. Even as an adult, I've seen plenty of uber-violence in all sorts of movies. There's one scene in particular that made me feel nauseous to the point where I actually got up to go to the bathroom just in case - where the woman gets her finger chopped off in "The Piano". I've seen worse things by a mile. Go figure.

As for Tolkien, there's a big difference from Hobbit, to beginning of LOTR, to end of LOTR, to Silmarillion. Hobbit is more or less a kid's book. It gets progressively difficult after that.

[Howard Treesong]

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I also got into Baum's "The Wizard Of Oz" series and Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series when I was in like 3rd/4th grade.

And the Choose Your Own Adventure books were awesome.

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All: Good suggestions, thanks. I'd forgotten about the Beverly Cleary and Encyclopedia Brown books. Anyone remember the Jupiter Jones books? I think they were related to Hitchcock in some way, but I'm not sure why; my memory is hazy.

I'll buy a stack of these and report at the end of the summer which were our favorites.

There is no problem whatsoever in getting the kids to read. If anything, I'd probably prefer that they root around in the mud in the back yard a little more, and read a little less.

[Duke]

Books that my niece has enjoyed reading:

The Eyes of the Dragon, Stephen King
Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore
Harry Potter, Duh
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

There's even a nonfiction option in there.

[The Bride]

I second Roald Dahl - wonderfully un-PC, with a penchant for killing off parents and characters in spectacular ways.