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tigriswolf So, what was your favorite childhood book? Or your favorite kid book?
(There is a purpose to this. It involves helping children learn how to read. So tell me!)
(There is a purpose to this. It involves helping children learn how to read. So tell me!)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-02 07:07 am (UTC)General recommendations for ages 6-8... Depends on the person and family, really. I was reading at age three according to reports so my perspective of age-appropriate reading material is quite skewed. :-P
'Dark is Rising' is great, but for many readers that age it might be a bit frustrating. We didn't get 'Grey King' in school until grade 7, but I'd peg it around grade 5 average level. Roald Dahl, Gordan Korman's early stuff that he wrote when he was thirteen, a lot of stuff that's probably out of print like the "Great Brain" books, "Encyclopedia Brown" (though they'd be quite dated now, I think)... Really depends on the individual child and their family.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-02 04:02 pm (UTC)Most of the kids'll be coming from harder homes, you know? Parents working too much, without a lot of time to spend with them.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-03 05:37 am (UTC)Birth to age 4: A beat-up found copy of an issue of Hanna Barbera's Laff-a-Lympics, and a 'Spiderman vs Doctor Octopus' flip book. I learned to read from those, and read the Laff-a-lympics one to my cousin when I was three, according to observers. I was always horribly bored by 'Golden' books, or other 'learning to read' books.
4-6: Space Cat and the Kittens series, some series about a space monkey, the Madeline books, and a grade 5 reader from the early fifties left over from mom's school days.
6-8ish: A retrospective of Superman comics. The "Great Brain" books. Tintin and Asterix. The Secret World of Og. Harriet the Spy. Encyclopedia Brown books, and subsequently the first three and a half books of the 1972 Encyclopedia Brittanica. :-P
8-11: From about the age of 8 onward, I'd get about 20 books a week from the public library and read them all, find ones that I liked and hunt down the rest of the books by that author. "The Last Legionary" Series by Douglas Hill; I got in trouble for renewing "Galactic Warlord" over and over for an entire year from the public library. I also had a scary Scholastic Book Club order each time. Of the books bought through that, I remember "Best Friend Insurance" and another one by the same person about turning into a goose, "george" a book about a kid with a really odd invisible friend, something about kids with silver colored eyes doing evil things, an Australian version of Tron (sort of), "The Changeover" by Margaret Mahy....
11-13: Gordan Korman books, particularly "Our Man Weston". The Little House on the Prairie books. Chronicles of Narnia. The James Bond novels. Choose your own adventure books from age 8 through 13. Movie novelisations.
13-onward: "Dark is Rising" Sequence by Susan Cooper, "Stainless Steel Rat" series by Harry Harrison, Star Trek tie-in novels. Anything by Heinlein, Spider Robinson, Robert Asprin, Alan Dean Foster... Mostly sci-fi, got more into fantasy in my later teens/early twenties; Terry Pratchett and Robert Jordan. Didn't discover Lois McMaster Bujold until after college.
Lots of other stuff, but that's just the stuff that stands out from the 'growing up' years.
Now, recs for your bunch... "Secret World of Og", Harriet the Spy, and the "Great Brain" books would probably be good. Anything that involves a self-reliant acessible protagonist/s and an element of escapism.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-03 06:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-03 08:10 am (UTC)