<p>I don’t think Lord of the Flies is particularly grim. It does deal with the demise of civilization, etc, but it presents it in a mostly non-graphical way. I had to read it in 5th grade for school, anyways.</p>
<p>Yes, Amy Tan and Sherman Alexie. Can Amy Tan wait for College is my only question about her. Or at least junior or senior year in high school. I think she is subtle.</p>
<p>Sorry if the above is disjointed; I am very tired. I will note, that my feelings have lessened considerably as I have read and seen and studied Art. Those novels and documentaries about genocide remind me off how terrible we are; art reminds me of the beauty in human thought and emotion. I find the extremes, the passions, which Dostovetsky writes about the most fascinating as only then we can contemplate ourselves. Our lives are spent living normally, dealing with day to day tasks under the veneer that we know as civilization. When we meticulously investigate beyond these superficialities, then we can see the truth. Typically, superficialities and light truths are more happy than their more profound counterparts; perhaps that is why most great literature is dark. That being said, perhaps we can decomstruct our lives further and find these truths, find beauty in our daily lives, which is what I believe ‘The Elegancenof the Hedgehog’ implores us to do. </p>
<p>As an aside, I consider myself an aspiring clinician scientist, so maybe I just unthinkingly take these things too literally or seriously, lol.</p>
<p>I too hate the middle school and high school English book list - all depressing stuff. I think they would do better to mix in some stuff which is not so dark. Freshman English was probably my daughter’s favorite of the four years because the theme was the hero’s journey and they did the odyssey and Greek myths (which I don’t consider depressing). My daughter refused to read another newbery winner after the girl’s death in Bridge to Terabithia. Yes, I know that teens consider their life tough and like to read depressing stuff which may make their life look better in comparison but I think the reading lists need to be balanced. Throw in a cheerful pride and prejudice after the depressing kite runner. Let them read one Shakespeare comedy over the course of high school instead of a tragedy every single year!</p>
<p>Never Let Me Go is a devastating recent book but very beautiful. I can never be sorry I read it.</p>
<p>Vonnegut is terribly cynical but very appealing.</p>
<p>I was once fired from a job at a Jewish secular school for assigning a poem by a young Holocaust victim to thirteen year olds, even though the school had mandated a Holocaust unit.</p>
<p>I tend to agree with Helen Caldicott when she says, “and it’s worse than I am even telling you now.”</p>
<p>My problem with Alice Walker is that everything is tied up in a pretty now at the end of The Color Purple. Why do we need that? The end of Beloved signals the acceptance of history instead of a triumph over history.</p>
<p>I fight every world Morrison writes riveting.</p>
<p>Try listening to her read her own novel, Jazz. It sounds like … well… jazz.</p>
<p>A week after 9/11 by daughter’s reading assignment in 6th grade was Earth Abides. If you’ve never read it, don’t waste your time. It’s a post-apocalyptic story written in 1949 and all I could think of the whole book was how much more the characters could have done to improve their situation. Parents begged the teacher to change the reading material but that wasn’t going to happen. He felt that gifted children should be able to understand that fiction and not be bothered by the fact that our country had just been attacked. Most parents chose to read the book before the kids had a chance so we were prepared to discuss it with them.</p>
<p>If you can get teenaged boys to read Pride and Prejudice you are a miracle worker.</p>
<p>i think amy tan’s okay for high school (advanced classes), but i know what you mean. the subtlety might inspire a second or third read post-high school (which would be good too).</p>
<p>for toni: yeah, listening to her read her stuff just might work for me (good suggestion!). that’s how i ‘read’ the color purple–by listening to it on the radio.</p>
<p>Listening to Morrison read her own work taught ME how to read her work. </p>
<p>Same with Frost. When you listen to Frost read his poetry, you really get how facetious he was being in his work. I think the rhyme can sometimes block that, or it did for me, at first.</p>
<p>poetgrl: Yeah, Frost is an imp and leads readers down the garden path. It’s fun to show kids how he does that.</p>
<p>He spoke at my mom’s HS graduation. His grandson was in her class in Bennington, VT Class of 1941.</p>
<p>My D had to read Taste of Blackberries in 3rd grade. It’s about a boy who gets stung by a bee and dies. To this day, she is goes beserk if she sees a bee.</p>
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<p>I agree with what mythmom said here. But I think a steady diet of dark books in high school, when kids are already feeling tender can be overwhelming.</p>
<p>As humans we are also creative and heroic and generous. I think the books that leave kids stunned and sad should be mixed with ones that leave them feeling expansive.</p>
<p>With the new Common Core (almost) national curriculum students are to spend less time reading fiction as they move through the grades. High school teachers may go from assigning eight novels a year to four.</p>
<p>I once had students go from a Hemingway unit to a Poe unit. Way too depressing! I learned to make better choices after that mistake.</p>
<p>I wanted to go back to ecouter11’s post with the remark that “my classmates either laugh them off or take it seriously for a bit and forget it.”</p>
<p>That is a big part of the problem for a sensitive student, if the teacher is not gifted. For example, it turns out that (in the view of some of the high schools students in QMP’s class) The Great Gatsby is actually a hysterical comedy on the order of the Three Stooges. The scene of Myrtle’s death is extremely funny. The incest element in Invisible Man makes a great topic to discuss very superficially over an extended period in class (the students, not the teacher) in order to disturb the girls.</p>
<p>I think that mythmom does not encounter this, because she is more gifted as a teacher (and she has a little help from the added maturity of college students vs. high school students).</p>
<p>I really sympathize with shoboemom’s daughter and her friends, as mentioned in post #52, that they were hoping for something less depressing in the reading assignments, and the next one coming up was a long suicide note.</p>
<p>I am not sure about your statement that the point of dark books is not that the world is awful, but that we are tender. Perhaps it would be better if high school literature classes were divided according to levels of empathy and intensity of response to literature, instead of the way that they are currently divided. Then it would be easier for the teachers to handle class discussion sensitively or appropriately for each group. Perhaps the high school students who are laughing about the tragic elements in books are doing that as a means of self-protection, because there have just been too many grisly or depressing stories.</p>
<p>I appreciated ecouter11’s <em>spoiler</em> that Miriam is executed in A Thousand Splendid Suns. Who could have predicted that?</p>
<p>On another thread, someone posted this link to the IB reading list (which is used in AP English at my daughter’s school). Would anyone care to take a look and recommend a couple from the list that would NOT be grim or depressing? I plan to talk to the program director about my concerns and would love to be able to offer alternative suggestions.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.westsoundacademy.org/images/stories/PDFs/ib_prl.pdf[/url]”>http://www.westsoundacademy.org/images/stories/PDFs/ib_prl.pdf</a></p>
<p>I think that joy can be profound. </p>
<p>Anyone who reads the newspapers and the history books has by now pretty much learned of the depths of human depravity. But there is very great joy in life, too. And it’s very hard to find in the newspapers and history books.</p>
<p>QM, I agree about the laughing being a form of self-protection. A teacher never knows what all is going on in a kids life, or how things are really affecting them. I can’t imagine that many kids are going to fully express their thoughts and fears in class.
I just don’t think kids (or even adults) need to read dark literature to grasp the issues being discussed. They live in a world that bombards them with bad news and reports about the worst of humanity. Many adult I know have stopped watching the news for periods of time, simply needing a break from it all. The kids should have that same option when it comes to what they are being exposed to.</p>
<p>I hope that you do not mind the “debaterish” elements of my posts, mythmom. I respect your viewpoint a great deal.</p>
<p>I was very interested in your remark about your son’s discussion of the use of the same verb for founding the city of Rome (“dum conderet urbem” I think?) and burying a sword in the flesh. I had never encountered that before.</p>
<p>From QMP, I heard a lot of “At regina pyra,” i.e. “But the queen the funeral pyre.”</p>
<p>The introduction of Dido in the Aeneid is one of the most breath-taking introductions of a female character that I have ever read.</p>
<p>I have a few questions about the Aeneid, which perhaps someone could answer here:</p>
<p>Why does Aeneas leave the underworld through the gate of ivory (deception) rather than the gate of horn (true dreams)?</p>
<p>Was Dido’s sister Anna also Aeneas’s lover?</p>
<p>Why did Vergil want the manuscript burned upon his death?</p>