While She Knits - Amuse Us!

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Everyone needs a laugh now and then.  Tell us a book-related funny story!

In the immortal words of Donald O'Connor, make 'em laugh.

mwt in Chattanooga: this time it's personal

[filkferengi]

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Here are my notes from her talk:

How children choose their books

Teach them to be responsible for their own reading well before 18.

Freedom to read vs. keeping children completely safe.

Look for developmental clues to when & how children are ready to choose.

Examine the book itself to see what it is: intro paragraphs, jacket copy, etc.

A very laudatory shout-out to Checkers [real name] who teaches kids skills.

Sometimes kids make mistakes in what they read, for example Sherwood Smith [sartorias, great LJ!] who read _Carpetbaggers_ & had a bad experience. mwt's own mom warned her against Alistair Maclean, that she wouldn't enjoy it.

Checking out the back/end of a book is a viable option.

Other people may give your kids books they're not ready for, especially downer/devastating school assignments, e.g. Steinbeck, Poe, _Flowers For Algernon_, etc.

Don't ask, don't tell--mwt's family doesn't make their kids read stuff they don't want to. Kids have agency, the right to control what's in their own heads.

1 complaint gets books pulled from the whole system. Should these books be available?

Ask your kid *why* they don't want to read the book, then ask the teacher why it was assigned. Most will assign another book to read.

**Trust a child to pick their reading material; give the mthe tools to choose, instead of choosing for them. Leave room for excellence, happy accidents. Introduce kids to librarians for good recs, or use the internet.

mwt recommends Andy Goldsworthy [artist], Diana Wynne Jones, Joan Aiken.

Her setting was Greece, not Middle Earth--foreign, but familiar. The cistern in Mycenae [picture on flickr] was the inspiration for the temple, water in the dark.

She recommends the Peter Dickinson article "In Defense of Trash." [He was *her* author, as his wife Robin McKinley was mine.]