Children's Books

[sleepy]

Beautifulanddamned, I'm such a dork. When I read that you had The Dollhouse Murders I gasped and chanted "Holy crap! Holy crap! Holy crap!" I loved that book. It was awesome!

[dwanollah]

Drop me PMs, kids, and I'll happily send you my paper!

Does anyone remember -- speaking of books about dollhouses -- a book about a girl who has a royal family living in her dollhouse? Her mother's a writer. And when the family leaves the dollhouse, the king leaves her his crown, which she wears as a ring.

I've also been trying to place a kids book (and it might've been YA) about a girl named Patricia who's overweight and wants a best friend and makes friends with a new girl (who I think was named Naomi) in her apartment building. Everyone calls her "Fatsy Patsy."

[Sukie]

Ok, I need everyone's help. My son is turning 9 in a week. He has just really began to get into reading. He loved the Captain Underpants books and everytime he goes into the bookstore, he picks up comic like books.

We went to the bookstore last week and I tried getting him to try some new ones - no go. We picked up a couple "Choose Your Own Adventure" but they are still a bit advanced for him.

I was a great reader from the beginning and devoured any and all books that came my way, so I will be honest and say I find my son's reluctance a little frustrating. I know he wants to read and likes to read, I just don't think he has built up the confidence to challenge himself a little more.

Does anyone have any good suggestions of books that would interest him? He seems to be in this inbetween stage of books that are too young and others that are too old. I am having a hard time, because all the books I loved at his age, had a girl slant to them( Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, etc),

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[chonies]

Dwan, there's a book called Fatsy Patsy by Ruth Small but I couldn't find a lot of bibliographic information about it, and the LC listing is very scant. ETA: The only info I've found so far is for a diety book on eBay, which looks like it's the wrong thing altogether.

There's also King of the Dollhouse, which sounds like what you were looking for.

[dwanollah]

Oooh, I think that's it! Thanks muchly!

[Deleted]

Sukie, your son might like books by Johanna Hurwitz. She's written lots of books where boys are the main characters, and I think her books would probably be placed on a 3rd grade level. A lot of her books are pretty funny--you could try "Hot and Cold Summer"--a funny book that has a boy as a main character. If your son would prefer books that are in a series, you might want to check out the Magic Treehouse or Boxcar Children books. (If those are too hard for him to get through, you could try Junie B. Jones books by Barbara Park.)

[thingamajig]

I know he wants to read and likes to read, I just don't think he has built up the confidence to challenge himself a little more.

I feel your frustration. My son just finished kindergarten but he reads on about a 4th/5th grade level, and I have the hardest time convincing him that certain books aren't too difficult for him. He loves reading, started reading early and reads really well, but he sees a book without a lot of pictures and declares that it's "too hard" even though I know he can read every damn word on the page and understand it. For some reason he finally settled down and is working his way through Harriet the Spy Yeah, Ramona the Pest is "too hard" but he's reading Harriet the Spy. Go figure.

you might want to check out the Magic Treehouse or Boxcar Children books.

Magic Treehouse books are great--we have a ton of those and the research books that go with them. Geronimo Stilton is an awesome and cute series that might be perfect for your son--they're actual books (as opposed to comic books) but are written in a very graphics-heavy style. Lots of different colors of text and funky fonts and pictures. Plus, fun stories.

[Sukie]

[quote author=thingamajig board=Books thread=1110507786 post=1151085447He loves reading, started reading early and reads really well, but he sees a book without a lot of pictures and declares that it's "too hard" even though I know he can read every damn word on the page and understand it. For some reason he finally settled down and is working his way through Harriet the Spy Yeah, Ramona the Pest is "too hard" but he's reading Harriet the Spy. Go figure.[/quote]

This is exactly how my son is. He has great reading comp. scores in school so I know he undersatnds what he is reading.Nice to know its not just me.

you might want to check out the Magic Treehouse or Boxcar Children books.

Magic Treehouse books are great--we have a ton of those and the research books that go with them. Geronimo Stilton is an awesome and cute series that might be perfect for your son--they're actual books (as opposed to comic books) but are written in a very graphics-heavy style. Lots of different colors of text and funky fonts and pictures. Plus, fun stories.

Thank you and stargirl for the suggestions. I know he has read a couple of Magic Treehouse books at school. I think this may be the way to go.

[maichen]

I never actually read Judy Blume growing up, so I'm commenting a little blind here, but I don't at all think the publishers should have updated her books with modern allusions. I guess I can see how the publishers might consider the issues she covered still relevant to today's children, and want to make the books even more accessible to them so that they weren't put off by references to tape decks or rotary phones or whatever, but one of the things I like best about reading books from past decades has always been finding out how people lived back then. Not that the 70s/80s were the distant past, but I kind of feel like Judy Blume's stories and how her protagonists dealt with their issues (from what I've read about her books, anyway) were specific to those times, and her books shouldn't be tampered with the way a more generic line of books like Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden could be.

For example, growing up I loved reading Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did books and learned a lot about both how children lived back then and about subjects like living in a just-developing West (in Clover). It was also interesting to read in Betsy-Tacy Go Downtown how people in Deep Valley reacted to the inclusion of telephones and cars in their lives, or in Rosamund DuJardin books to learn about dating mores of the 50s and how characters reacted to eating this brand-new food, "pizza" (which was given a very detailed description, as if the reader couldn't be expected to know exactly what it was like and made of; before I read that I'd never considered that pizza had not been a part of the American diet forever). Also, I remember one of Judy Delton's Kitty books (probably Kitty in High School) dealt with the first time Kitty had ever seen a tv, and she and her friend who had one spent an entire afternoon watching a test pattern like it was the most amazing thing ever.

Obviously all of those books are pretty deeply rooted in a specific time period, and "updating" them would destroy much (if not all!) of what makes them great, but what makes Judy Blume's books any different? If they really are "literature," they shouldn't be altered from their original form, so I think it diminishes them and treats them like generic series fiction to act like they can be changed so easily without ruining their core.

I didn't read Norma Klein either, but someone whose books I did enjoy (and checked out of the library over and over) in the 80s was Ellen Conford. Years later when I saw The Princess Diaries, I was struck by how similar it was to Conford's A Royal Pain (although "girl discovers she is secretly royalty/somehow better than she was thought to be" is a pretty common trope in young women's lit!), and I used to die laughing at Alfred G. Graebner Memorial High School Handbook of Rules and Regulations and We Interrupt This Semester For an Important Bulletin. I guess she was sort of my Judy Blume, because even though I didn't learn about sex from her books, she was one of my first exposures to reading about dating and gussying yourself up for the boys (Seven Days to a Brand-New Me, If This Is Love, I'll Take Spaghetti, and so on).

[Deleted]

Maichen, there's somebody else who has read Rosamund DuJardin's books?? I remember reading that book (one of the Marcy ones) and being surprised that she had never eaten pizza before.
And I do agree with you about updating books (though it made no sense when my students--struggling fourth graders--had to take a reading test where their ability to use reading skills was tested on a story where they had little background knowledge to help them with just the basic comprehension, but that's a different topic....)
I loved Ellen Conford books, too, but never liked Judy Blume. I read Judy Blume on the sly, because my mother was pretty strict about my reading material (so I guess I felt compelled to read them just to see what I was missing) but I disliked her books. I guess I thought she was too obsessed with sex and/or bathroom related issues (hated the scene in the book where the character is at her first day at a new school and finds out that the bathroom stalls in her new school have no doors).