<p>I think it’s kiddy lit.<br>
I hated Great Gatsby in HS. BORING. Now I’ve listened to it twice and really love it. Go figure. Can’t wait for the movie.</p>
<p>I love to read from all different genres, but I must say that I do prefer literary fiction. I find the common core’s focus on non fiction to be sad. I don’t think a person can be truly educated without reading a variety of fiction.</p>
<p>gouf-
It was “kiddy lit” but we affectionately called it “kitty lit” (as in kitty litter-- get it??)</p>
<p>I think common core focus should be to instill the love of good writing whether fiction or non-fiction. Variety is the spice of life.
I absolutely think someone needs to experience a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction. I think hitting more highlights than the in-depth study of very few books is more productive for younger ages especially.
And quit telling folks that their love of sci-fi, fantasy, less than stellar works is inferior to everything else. They’ll expand their focus to “higher” levels as it’s shown to be more interesting. Somebody wrote a story at a level that they can enjoy as entertainment–and I’ve always thought that was the point of writing–entertainment and enlightenment. But someone has to buy it first. Most of the “classics” were best sellers in their day–we’re just reading old best seller lists…so just you wait Harry Potter…just you wait…</p>
<p>Jouf, I agree that a goal should be to instill a love of literature, and I suspect that hitting the kids over the head with depressing works tends to have the opposite effect. My D was an avid reader coming into high school, but much less now…several times declaring that she hates ‘old’ books. She did pick up “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” on her own…determined to find some ‘classic’ that she might like…so far so good on that one. Poetry has become a chore. She is right now sitting across from me trying to answer analysis questions about a poem called " Black Hair".</p>
<p>Yes and no, gouf. Some (although by no means all) of the books we read today were best sellers in their time, but a lot of popular fiction has been forgotten. The 19th century was full of wildly popular sentimental and sensation novels, very few of which are still read by people not working on Victorian popular culture.</p>
<p>I know it was pages ago, but I’d feel remiss if I didn’t refute the claim that Dickens was paid by the word. Because he published serially, he was paid by the number of monthly parts; obviously, a novel that ran for two years made him more money than a novel that ran for one. However, Dickens was largely able to dictate how long he wanted each novel to be, and had enough projects going on at any given time that he really didn’t need to lengthen novels just to collect a paycheck. While he did need to fill up a certain amount of space in each monthly number, he had far more trouble cutting drafts down to size than he did meeting his page limit.</p>
<p>I feel that some adults–sometimes teachers, but possibly parents even moreso?–have a vague notion that their kid can’t possibly be learning if they’re having too much fun or reading something “too new”.</p>
<p>Take Shakespeare, for example. I am all for exposing kids to Shakespeare because, dang, that guy really was ALL THAT when it came to writing. He was brilliant, he was witty, and he understood human nature.</p>
<p>But I feel like the shroud of “SERIOUS LITERATURE, HMMM” makes it harder to appreciate Shakespeare, not easier. He wasn’t writing for the highbrows of his day, he was writing for everybody. He put in lines the upper class could appreciate and lines that Bob the dung shoveler could appreciate. Specifically, I feel that if a teacher isn’t pausing to point out all the hilarious sex puns, then Shakespeare isn’t being taught “correctly.” (Fortunately I had a teacher who DID point out all the sex puns, bless him.)</p>
<p>So I am not against “old literature” being taught at all, but at the same time, I feel that if a curriculum has nothing BUT “old literature”, well, that is . . . misguided. Shakespeare, Hemingway, any other great writer you care to name, they wrote about issues that were contemporary to them and important to them RIGHT THEN (even if their book/play was set in the past). There are writers out there writing on issues that are contemporary to us, RIGHT NOW, and bringing some of them into the curriculum shows students, hey, this is a living subject, we’re not just cleaning out a mortuary. And just because a book doesn’t have 500 doctoral theses written about it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have worth, or shouldn’t be read critically.</p>
<p>
Then there’s my son who pulled it out every time he was asked to pick a poem to talk about in class. Iraq War was in full swing - he thought the message still held. And I think he liked that he understood the Latin.</p>
<p>I think if you’re teaching Shakespeare, you have to go see the plays or watch the movies. When the kids realize how full of dirty jokes they are, (well at least the comedies), they’ll enjoy it a lot more. We saw a lot of Shakespeare in the park in summers and my kids never complained about being bored.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, I wasn’t “specific” on the matter, but I can still see in some of his novels that he was paid for the amount of content. And every writer has trouble cutting stuff out. Today he would cut more. That’s all. His best stuff is great. I adore “Great Expectations”</p>
<p>All Shakespeare is full of double entendres. Students nearly died when I elucidated what Hamlet meant by country matters (cu**t)ry matters.</p>
<p>With all the comments about Great Gatsby, I have to suggest checking out John Green’s crashcourse segments featuring that novel.</p>
<p>[Like</a> Pale Gold - The Great Gatsby Part I: Crash Course English Literature #4 - YouTube](<a href=“Like Pale Gold - The Great Gatsby Part 1: Crash Course English Literature #4 - YouTube”>Like Pale Gold - The Great Gatsby Part 1: Crash Course English Literature #4 - YouTube)</p>
<p>[Was</a> Gatsby Great? The Great Gatsby Part 2: Crash Course English Literature #5 - YouTube](<a href=“Was Gatsby Great? The Great Gatsby Part 2: Crash Course English Literature #5 - YouTube”>Was Gatsby Great? The Great Gatsby Part 2: Crash Course English Literature #5 - YouTube)</p>
<p>mythmom–really??? I never knew! And we go to Shakespeare in the Park and enjoy all the double entendres. Not looking forward to enlightening my son on THAT one, though…</p>
<p>I don’t recall having a problem with HS lit–I pretty much liked to read everything and read Jane Eyre & Wuthering Heights on my own. But freshman year in college, the teacher assigned The Ginger Man by JP Donleavy. I thought that character was DISGUSTING. Now it’s just another book I would not choose to read, but then…I was horrified. :D</p>
<p>Edit: I think we read The Mayor of Casterbridge and I read the rest of Thomas Hardy on my own. Liked him a lot more than Austen. I think I read everything Mark Twain wrote as well. Prince & the Pauper! Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court! :)</p>
<p>Talk about dark. Hardy is really dark. Jude the Obscure has the saddest scene in all literature I think, and my ex read it in class. I think I read it in a Victorian novels class, or maybe it was just the Mayor of Casterbridge. Can’t remember.</p>
<p>I’m wicked. I loved telling my kids Shakespeare’s double entendres, but you certainly don’t need to. My own are too old now to be fun to shock, and they can notice things for themselves.</p>
<p>I think that there is an interesting question about the effect of Jude the Obscure on reinforcing or weakening the class structure in England. From the historical viewpoint, I don’t know. </p>
<p>Many sections of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court are funny and clever. I would not recommend it as a “happy” selection though. My spouse and I took turns reading that book out loud on a cross country road trip. Somewhere around Green River, Wyoming, we got to the droit du seigneur/imprisonment part. I cried so hard I was unable to read.</p>
<p>Sorry to have missed this great thread! My son had the same complaint as QM and QMP about his high school literature curriculum. He wrote a few essays on the topic, and could be quite tiresome about it, actually.</p>
<p>I don’t have a lot of deep thought to contribute here, at least not deep thoughts that many others haven’t already expressed.</p>
<p>Some books I might teach to middle schoolers or high schoolers that are not “grim” and have high literary content value (and in some cases literary history value, the dreaded Canon, or as poetrygirl put it unintentionally, “Who gets to control the cannon?” – great question!).</p>
<p>Salman Rushdie, Haroun And The Sea Of Stories. My kids adored this when they were in middle school, and it accounts for my anti-lit kid having read all of Rushdie (starting with The Satanic Verses, because I told him it was a different version of the same book).</p>
<p>Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting. Ostensibly a children’s book, but very few concessions to immaturity in its language or style. Serious themes, but nobody dies.</p>
<p>Dai Sije, Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress. What more could you want than a non-Western book about the attractions of Western culture, and a (fairly) lighthearted personal memoir of a shattering event in modern history? Plus, quite a clever take on “the male gaze.”</p>
<p>Kids should read more Balzac, too. It’s a lot like Dickens (who had read a lot of Balzac, himself), but more concise, more cynical (and therefor less intent on horrifying the reader), and sexier.</p>
<p>Nancy Willard, Things Invisible To See. Willard is a children’s author; this is nominally a book for adults, but it’s about teens and pretty perfect for them. Serious themes, but not dealt with grimly. It has catastrophic harm from an accident, Nazis, even Death – against whom the main characters play a climactic game of pickup baseball. A lovely take on Magical Realism.</p>
<p>Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics. Folktales from the history of the Universe, as told by a loquacious function. Somewhat Grimm (Calvino separately did a Grimm-like collection of traditional Italian folktales), but not remotely grim.</p>
<p>Also, not so much for highschoolers, but some of you may enjoy Laurie Colwin’s Happy All The Time, a short novel I think of as an experiment in writing adult fiction without anything bad happening, ever.</p>
<p>Anybody ever read the “Classics” comic books? They took the classics and made comic books out of them. I read a TON of those and later on I read the real thing.</p>
<p>Yes, gouf78, I read quite a few Classics comics books at the beach. I doubt that I have any of them left–they would be water-splatted, crinkled, and probably still sand-filled–but it would be fun to look at them again now!</p>
<p>(mythmom, please do not shrink back in horror as you read this.)</p>
<p>gouf78–My youngest son was about 12 when his brother was in Les Miserables in the HS production. It inspired him (the younger one) to read the novel, since the plot/characters were already familiar to him. </p>
<p>I remember A Connecticut Yankee was so much fun at first, then got darker and darker. I was young enough to not get some of it I think, and was disappointed in where it was going.</p>
<p>JHS–I cannot see the name Balzac without thinking of the scene in The Music Man where the busybody lady cries in horror, “Balzac!” :D</p>
<p>Interesting discussion. Of course, we all have different tastes, but I have certainly felt that some of the high school reading my kids had was overly depressing. I do wonder if there’s a tendency to think that things that are funny, or postive, are “light” and thus not “serious literature.” This is a continuing issue with “Huckleberry Finn,” I think. (And you can’t dispense with Huck, not if you’re interested in American literature, at any rate.)</p>
<p>P.S. I nominate Jude the Obscure for the grimmest of them all. That really sad scene is unforgettable–but I hated it with a burning passion.</p>
<p>I remember a discussion some of us 7th-8th grade parents had about what our kids were being required to read. Besides some very good juvenile Holocaust literature about kids who had to hide or otherwise get along in that terrible time (but ultimately survived, IIRC), they seemed to be reading a lot of not very good light fiction. “Popular” stuff with no lasting value. One mom said they could be reading Dostoyevsky! Dickens! while most of us maintained there was a middle ground that was within the comprehension level of 7th-8th graders. ;)</p>
<p>I discovered Sci-fi in 7th grade and I would think Asimov, Heinlein, etc. would be interesting to high schoolers. What do English teachers think? Are they worthy of being added to the American “Canon”?</p>
<p>Oh, and we all read Vonnegut & Hesse because they were supposed to be “subversive.” :)</p>