Children's Books

[chonies]

I think rat makes an excellent point. The books might not fly as a solo-reader thing because they have old timey language and they are not the same as the movie. This could be one of those neutral preferences, like the difference between chocolate doughnuts and regular cake doughnuts. But if you make it a special parent/kid thing, they might appreciate it differently.

[groovethang]

Commenting on the years old thoughts on Love You Forever, I can't hate on it too much because of this.

[ratscabies]

Chonies Johnson is right! [/Blazing Saddles]

I do find myself "translating" on the fly as I am reading to MissP, changing the language up to make it easier for her.

Though, now that she is 8 and an accomplished reader, she is reading over my shoulder, and corrects me sometimes. Cheeky little twerp!

[smitten]

Sk1's current favorite book, at 4, is The Phantom Tollbooth. So we know all about translating vocabulary and the bonding experience being more than the book. :-)

I just want to make sure we won't ruin the movie by reading the OZ books.

[ratscabies]

Don't worry about that. The transition from book to film was well done. Reading the book to MissP after a lifetime of watching the movie, the color of the shoes was really the only thing that jumped out at me.

Of course the "Hollywood Ending" where it ends with Dorothy accepting it was all a dream is not in the book. In the literary realm, Oz is totally real. Otherwise there could be no more books!

[smitten]

Oh good! Sk1 asks me if it was all a dream, because he doesn't think so. And I tell him I don't think so either. So I'm glad that's the way the books go.

[ratscabies]

Just to cover my butt: it was 4 years ago that I read her the first book. It may indeed have Aunt Em saying it was a dream, but Dorothy knows better. I don't recall just now.

And Dorothy isn't in the 2nd book at all, so that could be confusing.

[famvir]

I've just started the Harry Potter books, and I'm really enjoying them (almost done with the second one). Amazingly imaginative! I looked for them in the YA section, and finding nothing, discovered them in the children's section of the library. That was a shocker!

[Ginger]

I just read Coraline and was not impressed by my first foray into the cult of Neil Gaiman. Maybe someone who has read it can explain it to me? Was it supposed to be an allegory for something? Is the Graveyard Book different/better or is Neil Gaiman just not for me?

Jan 30, 2016 11:30:28 GMT -4 famvir said:

I've just started the Harry Potter books, and I'm really enjoying them (almost done with the second one). Amazingly imaginative! I looked for them in the YA section, and finding nothing, discovered them in the children's section of the library. That was a shocker!

One of these days I'm going to join you as one of the people reading Harry Potter 15 years after everybody else.

[chonies]

Jan 30, 2016 20:19:32 GMT -4 Ginger said:

I just read Coraline and was not impressed by my first foray into the cult of Neil Gaiman. Maybe someone who has read it can explain it to me? Was it supposed to be an allegory for something? Is the Graveyard Book different/better or is Neil Gaiman just not for me?

You might want to try American Gods or the Sandman series, even though the former is an adult novel and the latter is a graphic novel/sequential art product. Both are widely loved; I really don't care for American Gods because I thought it was disappointingly dull and in desperate need of a heavy-handed editor. To its credit, this is the general consensus of negative opinions--it's an interesting book with a great premise but it put me off and I struggled, which further disappointed me because I wanted to like it. I like the idea of Neil Gaiman, but I don't really like his work.