Input sought on classics for children

Gina Dalfonzo is asking teachers and parents to weigh in on what classic short stories they use for elementary-school-level reading. One of her reasons for asking is that she loathes many of the stories she was subjected to as a child. This is not to mention that several of them gave her nightmares.

As an aside, I find myself in some disagreement with Dalfonzo on a few particulars. I liked "The Gift of the Magi," and I really liked "The Necklace." But I'm not sure I ran into either of these at school. (Which would make them discoveries, not assignments. I had some really nice assignments, mind you, but there is a sweetness to discovery, I think.) I think I ran into them when I was a bit older, too, which would make a difference, I suspect.

I agree with her on "The Lady or the Tiger." I never did 'get' that. Or like it. (The Frank Stockton book Rudder Grange, on the other hand, happened into my life at just the right time for it, and I laughed my head off. It's about a couple of young things with their heads in the clouds who write a manual on setting up housekeeping, before having any experience whatsoever in setting up housekeeping, and then who marry and set out to live by their manual. But the world, alas, isn't much impressed with their theories, and won't cater to their unreasonable ideas.)

Cult building 101

I agree with the people who think that this video is creepy. I agree with Bookworm that it reminds me a bit too much of the methods used by totalitarian leaders (not to mention other personality cults through the ages).

It's a shame, because the kids are really talented, especially the little girl who opens and closes. But what sort of parent plunks a child into this kind of leader-worship and applauds and hugs them for doing so well at it? (And are the grown-ups a bit blissed out for you in this video? Or is it just me?)

And why, pray tell, should I vote one way or another based upon the performance of persons too young to know what they're singing about? Why should anybody?

What is it with the Dems this year, with their repeated shift to the playground for spokesmen?

P.S. I shared this with a man I consider very wise, and one of the things he said is that he thought a bunch of those kids are going to look back on this with a great deal of embarrassment. To say the least.

I have to wonder how many of them, years from now, will look back on this project with at least a touch of resentment. I have a number of things in my youth and young adulthood that I've decided were best recanted, or apologized for, or otherwise filed under 'well-meant but ill-founded' - but they were my mistakes, not something my parents got me into. Whatever shortcomings my all-too-human parents had, using me to promote some agenda wasn't one of them, nor did they make the mistake of promoting me to an equal status with adults, when I was too young and ignorant and inexperienced and impressionable to hold my own with adults.

Added: Ed Morrissey says it better than most. And succinctly, too.

I'm with him. Leave the kids out of it, please.

Talented young ladies sing the national anthem

These kids do a great job with the national anthem of the United States.

The power of a personal letter

Sometimes it's really nice to get a letter that's written especially for you.

Exhibit A: f a i t h * i n * f i c t i o n: Amy Krouse Rosenthal Is Wonderful (make sure you check out the photo).

Related: Here's my thank you note to another writer, for what a letter from her did for some kids in my hometown.

Book note: Do Hard Things, by Alex and Brett Harris

I finished reading Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations today.

Is it too early to start nominating books for Best Book of 2008 honors?

The book was written by Christian teens primarily for Christian teens, but I think it has broader appeal, and application, than that. The Rebelution is a culture changing movement that appears to be catching on around the world, inspiring young people to crawl out of the cultural swamps of today and to live better, fuller, healthier, more meaningful lives than society in general expects them to. This book is about The Rebelution, and its principles, and about some of the kids who have launched themselves into life as Rebelutionaries. It's a well-written, entertaining book that's full of food for thought and great true stories.

See also: The Rebelution blog.

With some children...

"...the person they ought to be is fast disappearing...", TheHeadGirl says.

I more or less have to agree with her.

Parents, the ball's in your court.

Swedish school confiscates boy's party invitations

If a boy is inviting people to his birthday party, shouldn't he be allowed to invite his friends (subject to parental approval, of course)?

School officials in Lund, Sweden say no. They say an eight-year-old boy has to invite all his classmates, including the boys who don't get along with him.

Because, you know, otherwise it's discrimination.

We know this because when he handed out invitations, he didn't invite two boys, whereupon the school officials confiscated the invitations.

The boy's father has been reduced to filing a complaint with something called a "parliamentary ombudsman."

Uhm.

Raise your hand if you're glad you don't have a child in that school.

Raise your other hand if you're glad you don't live in Sweden.

(I thought the civil rights movement was all about encouraging people to judge other people on the basis of their character, instead of on the basis of irrelevant factors beyond their control. What in the world happened to that worthy goal? And how did mindlessness, of all things, take its place?)

A boy's-eye view

Here's a nice, short mother-son chat, with a surprise ending. (Or not so surprising, perhaps, if you've known a few boys...)

Poem: Death at Suppertime, by Phyllis McGinley

This is a Phyllis McGinley poem I hadn't seen before: Death at Suppertime. It's about children's programming in 1948, but it's got food for thought for today, I think.

Not quite clear on the concept

A neighbor came across the street to visit with my husband, who was working outside. A while later, his young son decided to join them.

'Uhm, did you look both ways before crossing the street?' my husband asked the boy when he got across.

The boy's eyes got big. 'No! I forgot!' he exclaimed, whereupon he ran across the street without looking, set up on the other side, carefully looked both ways, and came back, proud of himself for getting it right this time.

"I can see we need to work on this," his father said, once he recovered enough to talk.

Riding/walking to school

I'm getting this second hand, but a friend of mine was talking to a teacher the other day, who said that she was so concerned about kids not getting enough exercise that she set up a program that lets kids get off the school bus at a park nearly a mile from school and walk the rest of the way in the morning, and which sets in-town kids down at central locations and lets them walk home from there instead of receiving door to door service.

I had an inkling about the releasing kids at a central location part of the plan, since several busloads of kids get set loose about two blocks from here every school day afternoon. Silly me, I thought it was a sign that the schools got smart about taxpayer money and were cutting down on wear and tear on the buses, fuel costs, and driver hours. And here the program was started to encourage kids to get some walking in every day... Or that's what I hear...

If your schools (or your family, or whatever) have come up with ways to encourage kids to get more fresh air and/or exercise, feel free to let us know about it in the comments section. Thanks.

Making the internet safer for kids

See ADF Alliance Alert » Kidzui: New Internet browser for kids designed to screen out the bad stuff for info on a service that claims to help parents keep their kids away from bad sites on the internet.

Favorite picture books

A Circle of Quiet lists some of the favorite books for preschoolers around their house.

And (via Liberty and Lily, and a link hop or two) here's a fun video of a two year old girl "reading" a favorite book. And doing a very fine job of it, I might add. (Does it amaze you how much a two year old can memorize, and then dramatize? It does me.)

Book note: Tales from Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb

I'm currently reading Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, as reprinted in the Classics to Grow On series, this volume c. 1942, published by Thomas Y. Crowell Company for Keepworthy Books, a division of The Parents' Institute, publishers of Parents' Magazine.

The first edition of the Tales came out in 1807, and it seems to have been reprinted several times since. There are several editions available online, including multiple copies at Project Gutenberg. If you'd rather have a scanned version of an illustrated book, the University of Florida Digital Collections can oblige you.

In searching for an online preface to link to, I found that minor variations seem to pop up. This version seems close to the one I have, without the typo in the last paragraph that mars mine. I suggest reading the whole thing, but here's the last half, to whet your appetite:

It has been wished to make these Tales easy reading for very young children. To the utmost of their ability the writers have constantly kept this in mind; but the subjects of most of them made this a very difficult task. It was no easy matter to give the histories of men and women in terms familiar to the apprehension of a very young mind. For young ladies too, it has been the intention chiefly to write; because boys being generally permitted the use of their fathers' libraries at a much earlier age than girls are, they frequently have the best scenes of Shakespeare by heart, before their sisters are permitted to look into this manly book; and, therefore, instead of recommending these Tales to the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so much better in the originals, their kind assistance is rather requested in explaining to their sisters such parts as are hardest for them to understand: and when they have helped them to get over the difficulties, then perhaps they will read to them (carefully selecting what is proper for a young sister's ear) some passage which has pleased them in one of these stories, in the very words of the scene from which it is taken; and it is hoped they will find that the beautiful extracts, the select passages, they may choose to give their sisters in this way will be much better relished and understood from their having some notion of the general story from one of these imperfect abridgements; - which if they be fortunately so done as to prove delightful to any of the young readers, it is hoped that no worse effect will result than to make them wish themselves a little older, that they may be allowed to read the Plays at full length (such a wish will be neither peevish nor irrational). When time and leave of judicious friends shall put them into their hands, they will discover in such of them as are here abridged (not to mention almost as many more, which are left untouched) many surprising events and turns of fortune, which for their infinite variety could not be contained in this little book, besides a world of sprightly and cheerful characters, both men and women, the humour of which it was feared would be lost if it were attempted to reduce the length of them.

What these Tales shall have been to the young readers, that and much more it is the writers' wish that the true Plays of Shakespeare may prove to them in older years - enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity: for of examples, teaching these virtues, his pages are full.

Add this to the evidence that we tend to set our sights lower these days. These tales for 'very young readers' are not dumbed down in the least.

And, please note, in the above preface, brothers are expected to watch out for their sisters. If you are a feminist, I'd invite you to stop having a hissy fit long enough to think about the alternatives. Do we really want to encourage boys to not look out for their sisters? I don't think so. Admittedly, loving protectiveness can be overdone, but kept in check it's a wonderful quality, I think.

A side note. In my copy, Shakespeare is spelled Shakspeare.

Links to some earlier 'children and Shakespeare' posts here.

Slamming the door

My husband was at our gas station/bookstore the other day when a car drove up to the pumps, and a mid-teen boy jumped out of the passenger side, dashed around to the driver's side, and opened the door for the woman inside. My husband was impressed, all the more so because the woman appeared to be the boy's mother.

"Hey, is that your mom in there?" he asked, or something to that effect.

"Yep!" the boy said, pleased to have been asked.

Whereupon the mother launched into a detailed explanation about why no one should be impressed with the kid's apparent good manners because he was only doing it so he could sit in the driver's seat and dream about driving, and he did this as often and for as long as he could, and so she was going to sit there until he got tired of it, because she was tired of how hard it could be to get him out of the seat once he got there and... and on and on, providing highly embarrassing details of previous run-ins, being heedless of the distress she was causing everyone in the vicinity, until the kid, humiliated, slammed the door and went back to the passenger seat.

Uhmmmm...

Let us concede that even the best of children can drive even the best of parents to the snapping point from time to time. But...

Here she was, with a grown man backing her up, a grown man who had pleased the kid by approving his good manners, a grown man who would have happily helped josh the kid out of the driver's seat if it came to that, and... she ruthlessly kept slamming her son until he slammed the door...

Uhmmmmm...

Try not to do that sort of thing. OK? Please?

Initiative lessons, part two

Sure, you want your kids to have initiative. But sometimes that means putting up with their ingenuity... :)

And, hey, I think Wonder Boy did good, don't you?

What you see isn't always right, with teens

Several years ago, we had a problem with teen boys gathering near our combination bookstore and gas station after the neighboring grocery store closed for the day. They'd park their pick-ups and cars in a huddle, and stand in front of them, trying to look tough as the rest of the community went by. For all intents and purposes, they'd taken over the grocery store parking lot (which adjoins ours). They were making people unhappy. They were making me unhappy, too. But I gritted my teeth and decided to wait them out, figuring they'd get bored with the game someday, figuring it would be asking for trouble to confront them.

One day, someone muttered angrily to my husband that 'somebody ought to do something' about those kids. My husband looked across at the kids, studying them, then said he thought the person was right. He grabbed his cane and walked alone over to the pack of teens. I watched with my heart in my throat. The next thing I knew, the kids were crowding around him, looking very happy, and shaking his hand.

My husband came back and I asked him what in the world had just happened. "I deputized them," he said. "You did what?!" I said, before I caught myself. He smiled. "The main thing wrong with those kids is that no one has given them any responsibility. I told them we'd been having a little trouble over here and I'd appreciate it if they kept an eye out for us while they were here." I was dubious, but he assured me it would work.

And it did. He was right. I was wrong. The kids weren't looking for trouble, really. They mostly wanted to be grown-ups, and weren't getting enough opportunity to practice, or enough encouragement in the right direction. So they were building facades.

I think that's true of a lot of teens. And it's one thing I tend to forget.

Amanda Witt has another angle on the subject.

Update: My husband offers a mild correction. What he was giving those kids was responsibility and authority. I consider that an important point. Some of the worst experiences of my life grew out of situations where I had responsibility without authority.

Beatle-based silliness in South Korea

Oh, my. Dawn Eden links to a video of a four year old boy who really knows his Beatles songs. If you can watch without collapsing in laughter you're tougher than me. And who knew the Beatles were still big, and in South Korea of all places?

I was about that age when the Twist became popular. One of my earliest memories is of my sister and me being talked into doing the Twist at a great-uncle's house, and the grown-ups passing the hat around after they stopped laughing. I didn't 'get' the laughter, but we did get to keep the money that had been dropped into the hat. I think it was the first money I ever 'earned,' and I remember it made me feel rather grown-up and important.

I've often wondered if they'd planned to pass the hat around, or only hit upon the idea when they realized they'd upset little girls by asking them to do something and then laughing at them when they did. My fuzzy, faded, undoubtedly-altered-by-the-passage-of-time memory seems to support the 'oh, my goodness, we didn't mean to make them cry, do something!' theory.

Not that I blame them for laughing. A little girl twisting with gusto would probably be hard to watch with a straight face. Two at once could push anybody over the edge.

The Korean kid, bless his heart, seems to be enjoying himself, and taking it pretty much in stride, despite the adults going nuts around him.

When you've got flu in the house...

... of course you should protect those near and dear to you. Even if they're stuffed animals. :)

We have been battling the flu, or something very like it. If I had a magic laundry basket I'd put it into play, too.

While we're on the subject of germs, this week (just before the flu hit) at the post office I ran into a friend we hadn't seen in a while. He asked how my husband was doing. I said he was still on oxygen 24/7 but otherwise pretty good. We live near the post office, so I suggested that the friend stop in and say hi and see for himself. So he walked home with me, and I left the gents to get caught up with each other. I guess the visit was going pretty good until the friend mentioned that one of his kids was really sick and might have whooping cough, and they were waiting to see if the family was going to have to be quarantined.

I wasn't there, but I understand that right about then the friend had a classic "oh, my goodness, what am I doing?!?" moment. And then he left, rather hastily, from what I understand, apologizing as he went out the door. He is not, you understand, someone who would visit someone with lung problems if he'd remembered that little detail beforehand. For that matter, I'm not sure he'd have visited healthy people if he'd remembered that little detail beforehand. We just kind of got carried away because we hadn't seen each other in a long time, I guess. It just took a while to get from "Hey! Good to see you!" to "What's happening at your house?" Oops.

Since I'm already self-quarantining as much as possible because of the flu, it's kind of like serving consecutive sentences. As these things go, in other words, it's pretty good timing. Unless of course we were incubating flu at the time of the gentleman's visit, and sent that home with him... (Yarg. This time of year and illnesses! Yarg.)

Did you know that cases of whooping cough have been surging in recent years?

Toddler behavior explained, and an Oregon croc

Gee, do you think that toddlers haven't developed grown-up thinking skills yet? That they have to be taught to behave? That you can't reason with a toddler as if he's an adult?

To some people this is news. From Tara Parker-Pope's article, "Coping With the Caveman in the Crib" (New York Times, February 5, 2008):

Now Dr. [Harvey] Karp, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Los Angeles, has turned his attention to the toddler years, that explosive period of development when children learn language, motor skills and problem solving, among other things. The rapid pace at which all these changes occur is nothing short of astonishing, but it can also be overwhelming to little brains. A wailing baby is nothing compared with the defiant behavior and tantrums common among toddlers.

In his latest book, “The Happiest Toddler on the Block,” Dr. Karp tries to teach parents the skills to communicate with and soothe tantrum-prone children. In doing so, however, he redefines what being a toddler means. In his view, toddlers are not just small people. In fact, for all practical purposes, they’re not even small Homo sapiens.

Dr. Karp notes that in terms of brain development, a toddler is primitive, an emotion-driven, instinctive creature that has yet to develop the thinking skills that define modern humans. Logic and persuasion, common tools of modern parenting, “are meaningless to a Neanderthal,” Dr. Karp says.

The challenge for parents is learning how to communicate with the caveman in the crib. “All of us get more primitive when we get upset, that’s why they call it ‘going ape,’ ” Dr. Karp says. “But toddlers start out primitive, so when they get upset, they go Jurassic on you.”

Full article here.

So, those of you who have actually raised toddlers to the next stage of human development -- have brought them forward into the Cenozoic, so to speak -- feel free to weigh in.

As for the 'Neanderthals in the Jurassic' business, let's try to remember these people are speaking figuratively here. OK? (And I hope they're joking where they say, "In fact, for all practical purposes, they’re not even small Homo sapiens." Of course they're small Homo sapiens. Exhaustingly immature Homo sapiens, perhaps, but definitely full-fledged members of the species. And sometimes they're even cute. Such a deal.)

Side note: Isn't there some debate on whether Neanderthals were as primitive as depicted in popular culture and some science texts? Isn't it rather more common these days to put them forward as rather more sophisticated than your average toddler? I know, I know, we're speaking figuratively here, and you and I are perfectly capable of enjoying caveman jokes without worrying if they're justified. But still, I would like to note that I don't know if they are justified.

Found while searching for something else about the Jurassic: Photo in the News: Jurassic "Crocodile" Found in Oregon (National Geographic News: March 22, 2007.) That's interesting. I live in eastern Oregon. We have lots of fossils around here, many of them looking rather tropical. (Talk about climate change!) But in this case, the scientists were speculating that this 'croc' started out in Asia and its fossilized remains were propelled by plate tectonics across to our decidedly inland mountains? Hmmm. I guess anything's possible, but... isn't it a bit more likely that it was just a local croc? I guess I'd like to know what sort of rock the fossil was in, and whether it matches Asian rocks with similar fossils.

P.S. I was telling a friend about the supposedly Asian fossil being shoved into our mountains theory, and he said he'd heard that a pterodactyl (aka pterosaur) had carried the croc over and dropped it here. I'm pretty sure he was joking. But, hey, it's a theory... :)