Re: Is this book appropriate for 4th graders?


"Clisby" <clisbyw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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bizby40 wrote:
"Clisby" <clisbyw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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No one is saying they "shouldn't" read it -- you seem to be kind of
stuck on that actually. What we were saying about LotR
specifically, and other books in general is that if kids read them
before they are old enough, they won't get the full value, and they
*may* be turned off of that book in particular, or even of reading
in general.

I responded to a specific comment:

"Not according to Tolkein: he thought teenagers shouldn't read Lord
of the Rings. The Hobbit is aimed at a younger audiance though."

Okay, I apologize. I thought you were talking about parents
forbidding them to read it. If Tolkien did say that, I suspect he
didn't mean it in the sense that teens should be forbidden to read it,
but more that he felt he'd written it for an adult audience.

There is a big difference between steering your kids to quality
books at their reading level and actually forbidding them to read
books.

Of course - and both have come up in this discussion. When it
comes to LOTR, though, I'm surprised anyone would think it's too
difficult for teenagers. If I were in the habit of steering
children toward certain books, I would unhesitatingly steer a
teenager toward LOTR.

Well, there are teens and then there are teens. I read it for the
first time when I was about 13, at my dad's suggestion. He said he'd
read it for the first time at that age and he loved it. I enjoyed the
hobbit, but rather slogged through the rest. I wouldn't have said at
the time that it was over my head, just that it was rather boring. I
am by no means a genius (esp. compared to USENET where very smart
people seem to abound), but I did and do read voraciously, and my
reading and comprehension skills were substantially above average for
my age.

I went a couple of decades wondering what all the fuss was about, and
then I decided to give the set to my nephew for Christmas -- he was a
bit older than I'd been -- maybe 15? And since it was on my radar
again, I decided to check it out of the library and re-read it. This
time I was enthralled. I read it again just a year or two later
because the movies were coming out, and with each reading it got
better.

So whether or not I would steer a teenager to LotR depends a lot on
the teen. An older teen who was already into fantasy? Sure. A teen
of any age who struggled with reading? Probably not. I wouldn't
suggest it to a younger teen unless their other reading suggested they
were ready for it. I wouldn't forbid it to anyone that asked, but for
some I'd be skeptical that they'd benefit.

FWIW, my daughter is in the 6th grade. There are 2 or 3 kids I know
in her grade that would probably do fine with it (not suggesting that
there are only 2 or 3 in the grade -- just of the kids I know). She's
not one of them. I don't know how I will assess the situation in 2
more years or 4 more.

When I was in junior high and high school, I doubt I was ever
assigned books or stories that were written *for teenagers*. We were
assigned adult books. Naturally, the difficulty of the work
mattered - in 7th grade, we read "A Tale of Two Cities", not "Bleak
House." In high school, we read a short story by William
Faulkner - we didn't read "Absalom, Absalom". Maybe high school
reading assignments have changed considerably since I was there, but
I would think kids who were expected to read books by Dickens,
Hawthorne, Cather, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald could muddle through
LOTR.

You really want them to "muddle through"? We were assigned the same
kinds of books you were, but then again, we were also discussing them
in class. That is, the teachers did not expect us to pick up on all
the layers of meaning, they were teaching us to look for and recognize
them. I think perhaps I would have gotten more out of LofR at that
age if I read it in that kind of a situation.

Besides, I'm not necessarily talking about books that were written
"for teenagers," though I realize that you are referring to the
Tolkien quote again, but books that are written at a good level for
teens. As you say, difficulty matters. If you look at the McCaffrey
books, they are spread all over the library. My daughter loved
Dragonsinger and Dragonsong (which can be found in the Juvenile stacks
at our library) went on through all the McCaffrey from the Young Adult
stacks, but lost interest when she got to the ones from the adult
stacks.

Right. The idea of my daughter asking permission to read a book
seems odd. To each her own.

It sounds odd to me when you put it that way too. She's never
actually asked "permission." It's just that since I'm with her when
she gets books, I'm aware of what she's getting. I haven't had reason
to tell her she *couldn't* check something out before, but I have once
or twice told her that I thought a book would be too heavy for her and
she should wait. LotR is one that she wanted to get anyway, and then
brought it home only to abandon partway through out of boredom.

Bizby


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