Literary Criticism from 12 year olds

[hobgoblinn]

Some wisdom out of the mouth of the disgruntled pre teen....

It seems that Wee Hob has a book to read before school starts. I haven't pushed him on it hard this summer because he actually HAS been reading a different book his godmother lent him: Support Your Local Wizard by Diane Duane. The fact that he was reading anything all on his own, by his choice, was just too cool for me to interfere. He has ADHD and other educational issues, but his Reading and Writing teacher recommended he be moved to a regular class in the fall. So he'll have to work a little harder to keep up. Which brings us back to the summer reading he is absolutely refusing to do.

Okay, I get that the book is not about magic or wizards or dragons. It's The Color of My Words by Lynn Joseph. Here's what's wrong with it. according to our young critic (who knows this from being forced to read the back cover):

It's about a girl. Girls are boring. (before I got too happy about this, he clarified that girls find boring things interesting and they talk about them. Endlessly.)

It probably has stupid people in it. Like the Nazis. (I had mentioned another summer reading Number the Stars, which also has a girl protagonist, as an example of a non boring book about a girl, and he said that one was boring because the bad guys were so stupid. "You can't get much stupider than Nazis.")

That's about the end of the criticisms so far. The others are more centered on the general unfairness of my making him get up this morning, bothering him about reading the boring book in the first place, making him clean his room before he can have friends over or get a bike, etc.

That's what's going on in this realm. That and still reading (but also starting to write) some HP genfic.

How are you?

Hob

ETA: I have just been informed there's also Poetry in the book. Bad poetry. I can see this is going to be an uphill battle.....

Comments

[gillo]

This is where I thank the Lord, fasting, that I only ever had twelve-year-old girls. Pulling them out of a book in order to clean rooms (still a nightmare) or help with housework - now that was the problem.

Poor lad. A lot of boys his age have problems with reading - they seem to have an excess of energy and sitting with a book is almost physically painful for some of them. And because they don't read much, reading is more difficult for them. "Boring" is almost code for "this is difficult and I can't admit that fact."

Good luck to you. It's vital to keep him reading something, anything, even if it's way below his grade level. The habit of reading is the single best predictor of future academic success.

But you knew that. If only there were a way of getting them to grasp it too.

[nemaihne.livejournal.com]

Hey, he's twelve and he knows Nazi's are stupid- ie: bad.
He's doing better than some adults.

[(Anonymous)]

My son is 11 and has the same "I hate reading" attitude. His sister got him hooked on the James Patterson series, Maximum Ride. The chapters are short and the action is non-stop. I found that reading the first three or four chapters to him really got him hooked (he doesn't need to be read to at this age, but has a hard time getting interested if the author takes too long to set up the story at first). When I put the book aside, he wanted more. I told him I was done reading. He replied, "Well, give me the book -- I'm going to read it myself." Bingo!