Xopher--I have deeply mixed feelings, myself. The statement was meant slightly tongue-in-cheek.
sorry.
Ya'll are terrific. Thank you for the many and various suggestions, both here and emailed privately.
Take away magic, sex, violence, moral ambiguity, portrayals of proscribed religions, non-traditional/non-christian perceptions of God (and whatever other objectionable elements I've already forgotten)--and it turns out there are STILL a number of wonderful books around.
How cheering.
Rachel, you're absolutely right. In fact, one author's popularity almost guarantees that young fans of her books will go on to read other, (better) books.
Although, for the record, I think the HP books are terrific good fun.
Mel
Janet, thank you for the reference--I'll order it. Even if it doesn't help with these parents, there might be others.
Laura, there are good stories, too. Like the concerned and well-educated Mom who sped-read her way--laughing but a bit appalled--through the first five or six VC Andrews book, just so she could discuss them with her dyslexic thirteen year-old daughter who has a yen for sex and horror.
Who the heck knew THOSE books would hold up so well? They were around when I was a kid. I vividly remember hiding them in my locker from my OWN fundamentalist parents.
Although, if I did this for a living, instead of as a volunteer, it probably WOULD break my heart.
Jonathan--thank you for the links, I hadn't seen either.
"The Methodist Minister and Harry Potter" essay points out what is, to me, a really stunning dilemma--silly as it seems, when reduced to a discussion of Hogwarts-style magic.
As a volunteer, I work with one girl who loves the Harry Potter books. She recently made that quantum leap to become enough of a reader that she actively seeks out books she thinks she'll enjoy, as opposed to simply passively accepting whatever I manage to find for her that rouses more enthusiasm than a passive shrug. Her grades have risen steadily.
Then she came in a few weeks ago and told me she couldn't read any of the stuff she really liked, any more. It seems she and her parents attend a church that hosted an old-fashioned book-burning, and she'd sacrificed her Harry Potter books to the cause--under a certain amount of parental pressure.
Being fairly anarchistic and subversive by nature, my inclination is to simply help her conceal the reading materials in which she's interested. The parents absolutely refuse to even consider having books that have anything to do with "magic" in the house.
But I can't put the kid in that position. So we're back to the stage where I trot out whatever I can find (sneak past the censors) that will rouse more than a passive shrug. I sent home _The Chronicles of Narnia_ . . . hopefully those will fly with the fundamentalist Christian folks.
I wonder if the same qualities that make these books resonate so strongly with some, result in the rabid antipathy from others? It's a bit weird.
I tutor remedial reading. Actually, I guess I should say I try very hard to teach kids to read who should have already learned. Most of them aren't even reading remedially.
Thank god for Harry Potter. And Mercedes Lackey books. And Superman. And anything else that catches their fickle imaginations.
Good, that's settled. You guys can have my share of the world's chocolate. I'll swap for the leftover okra and yams.
okay--I can accept that preparation--salt-leaching, acid soaking, disguising with vast quantities of Velveeta cheeze-like-food, etc.--might make brussels sprouts more palatable.
Now, what do you have to do to chocolate to make IT less bitter and generally mouth-unfriendly...
Don't like chocolate. It tastes just like brussels sprouts. Loathe brussels sprouts.
Can't make my tongue do the cylinder-thing, either, spent hours upon hours trying to do so, as a child. Everyone else in my family can.
Maybe my mother really DID find me under a cabbage leaf.
it SAID I was a grammar god...but everyone here always sounds so much smarter than me...I....me...ummmmmmm
Celia and Cassandra, try hitting F11 twice. I run XP on my box, and that seems to fix it. (TNH blogged something to that effect, and why it happens, before she was so drastically ill and silent for so long.)
luck.
*briefly de-lurking, due to inspiration from recent thread*
...monkey sex in the Starbucks bathroom...this could happen (admittedly unlikely, but still)...I need a laptop. And a Starbucks.
Then I just _know_ I could actually finish writing the farkin' book! I've obviously been going about things all wrong, coming home from work every night and writing until the wee hours whether I feel like it, or not.
Gosh, non-existent facts and bad logic in a single package.
The writer of this pass-along completely ignores Eisenhower's infamous "Domino Theory"--defining our cold-war era foreign policy for decades. American military advisors were training South Vietnam forces as early as 1956 (during Ike's 1st term) and the first 2 U.S. servicemen killed in Vietnam in 1959 (Ike's 2nd term.)
It was all Kennedy's fault, though. Somehow.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 14 |
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