Wednesday, February 23, 2005

What my kids are reading now

The book my daughter's class just finished reading in school is "Holes," the contemporary kids' classic by Louis Sachar. The teacher told me that most of the students in the class had already read it and were very familiar with the plot's twists and turns. My daughter, not so much. This is the first time she's read it, and it's still considerably over her head. We're going to try watching the movie and see if Shia La Beouf can somehow bring it home, but if not we have a study guide and she'll just memorize that darn thing for the test.

The book she's reading for "pleasure," if you can use that term with a kid whose motto is "I hate reading," is a Full House novelization, "No-Rules Weekend!" No hard-to-follow plot twists here for sure. And apparently that's a good thing, because my girl actually said "I like this book" after we finished reading last time, and if she'll keep that attitude up I'll get her every Stephanie 'n' Michelle title I can find.

My son, on the other hand, is a book lover, and has been reading Beverly Cleary's "Dear Mr. Henshaw" to me with great enthusiasm. He read it last year with this special-ed class and again this year (he has the same teacher), and quotes it from time to time, so it's nice to actually read the book with him and share his excitement. I don't know how much he "gets" it, inferring the author's responses from the letters the main character writes, but he reads it willingly, and that's something in our house.

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