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Forum -> Chinuch, Education & Schooling

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Rappel

Thu, Dec 20 2018, 7:25 pm

amother wrote:

So why not explain that to her??? That you are okay with her reading books with subtle references to romance but this series that she has taken out has a romance between the same gender and that is not something you want her to read.
I think it pays to be honest with children. I believe that when something becomes forbidden with no explanation it piques the curiosity. Don't you rather discuss with her why certain books are inappropriate or not instead of her sneaking behind your back to find out 'what mommy was talking about when she said it is inappropriate'. (Speaking from personal experience here)

Agreed.

And if it weren't Riordan... Many things go over nice BY girls' heads. I must have read Tamora Pierce's "Squire" a dozen times and never noticed that anything inappropriate happened in the book. Then one day I was reading aloud to my sister, and my mum heard, and banned the book. No questions, no explanations. If she'd never said anything, then I probably would never have noticed that the main character was kissing her boyfriend. Honest and true.

Rappel

Thu, Dec 20 2018, 7:30 pm

As for author recommendations: if you don't mind magic and fantasy - Diana Wynne Jones' books are all clean, and she has a LOT of them.

And Patricia Wrede, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles series - laugh-out-loud, knock- your-socks-off funny, and super clean.

ETA: I don't want to hijack your thread with a book list, but if you pm me her style, then I'll send you back recommendations. I was also a precocious bookworm, and I may be able to suggest stories she hasn't read yet.

urban gypsy

Fri, Dec 21 2018, 7:10 am

amother wrote:

When she got into bed she asked if she could have the book "just to read the names of the chapters"...this was really heartbreaking to me.

Oh my gosh this completely broke my heart. What a sweet girl. She sounds like a really wonderful kid. Sad

amother

Violet

Sun, Dec 23 2018, 12:00 am

Rappel wrote:

Thanks for the suggestions. Laugh out loud knock your socks off funny and super clean sounds EXACTLY up her alley. Rappel, I know you are in Israel, do you know if her books or translated to hebrew? Any other suggestions would be great, but I'd rather not pm.

amother

Violet

Sun, Dec 23 2018, 12:09 am

urban gypsy wrote:

Oh my gosh this completely broke my heart. What a sweet girl. She sounds like a really wonderful kid. Sad

I know, right?
bh she really is...
Walking this tightrope between sheltering and also trying to be relatively open and balanced has been quite the juggling act. I ended up reading through the whole book in a day, I told her she could read it in the end, but just asked her to skip one chapter. I felt that in light of her response it would do more damage to withhold the book, than to expose her.

ruby slippers

Sun, Dec 23 2018, 1:03 am

Since it is a series, she may just want to know how the author ties it all together. Can you tell her the ending?

saw50st8

Tue, Dec 25 2018, 9:00 am

OP, the Rick Riordan books have a lot of redeeming qualities about them but he is super liberal with respect to issues relating to kids who are different. I don't think any would fit the bill.

I think Artemis Fowl might be a great choice. It's about a boy who discovers fairies. I don't remember anything specific that wasn't OK but I haven't read them in a long time.

Also try the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

tryinghard

Tue, Dec 25 2018, 9:18 am

There is a site that I use, https://kosherbooks.org/ , which sounds like it might be better than CSM. It very clearly delineates the issues so you can decide for yourself, and they go through each individual book in a series. However, I do find that there are a lot of books that I search that aren't on there...

tigerwife

Tue, Dec 25 2018, 10:57 am

saw50st8 wrote:

Artemis Fowl is fantastic. Clean, smart, and very funny, plus enough books in the series to last a while. It seems like the first five at least are translated to Hebrew. Great choice.
http://www.israelbooks.com/boo.....t=322

amother

Violet

Tue, Dec 25 2018, 12:21 pm

tryinghard wrote:

Thank you much for this!
I never heard of this website before!
I will definitely check it out!

amother

Violet

Tue, Dec 25 2018, 12:24 pm

tigerwife wrote:

Someone JUST suggested this at the shabbos meal we were at last week! I think this will be our next series! Thanks for the suggestion

imasoftov

Tue, Dec 25 2018, 10:39 pm

saw50st8 wrote:

Also try the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

Crossdressing (Eowyn, female dwarves), women in the army (Eowyn again, and in some circles, men in the army is also a problem). Also intermarriage (Men and Elves, maybe Tom and Goldberry too). And mixed dancing (Beren and Luthien). And there don't seem to be any filters on the Palantíri (I once read a satire in which they connected to something called "Atlantis On Line" ...). Kol Isha (Luthien, Goldberry, Galadriel, Arwen). Magic. Eating rabbits. Smoking (whether it's tobacco like Tolkien intended or weed as they sometimes call it).

amother

Violet

Wed, Dec 26 2018, 2:41 am

imasoftov wrote:

imasoftov

Thu, Dec 27 2018, 8:46 am

imasoftov wrote:

So last night DH and I started to sketch out some fan-fiction. Stop us if this has been done before.

Éowyn and Faramir were planning on naming their firstborn Boromir, in memory of Faramir's brother, but their first child was a daughter. Since the Stewards often had names of heros of the First Age, and the original Boromir was a chieftain of the First House of the Edain they name her Emeldir, after the wife of that Boromir's grandson Barahir, who would have prefered to stay and fight alongside her husband in Dorthonion , but in the end led the women and children to safety in Brethil. But Éowyn has put adventuring and fighting behind her, and Emeldir is brought up to be a proper noblewoman of Gondor and her tutors are instructed to never mention the name Dernhelm, upon pain of being transfered to the only public school in what used to be Mordor where Sauron's former slaves were being gradually taught to live as free Men.

One year, when Éomer and Aragorn go off fighting in the East, when Faramir heads off to fulfill his duties as Steward in Minas Tirith, Eowyn is asked to serve a siimilar role in Rohan, prince Elfwine being too young to rule, and Eowyn being the highest-ranking noble of Rohan. (Éomer: "Give me your word that this time you will stay and rule rather than sneak off to war", Éowyn, "Not in front of my d-a-u-g-h-t-e-r and anyway stop bringing that up, it was years ago and my shield-arm never fully recovered from being broken by the Witch-king, not that I haven't been avenged for that"). Unfortunately Éomer's minstrel has composed a ballad about Éowyn's past, they're very proud of that chapter of her life in Rohan, and think it will please their temporary ruler to be lauded for her past acts of heroism. He performs it for her while she's seated on the throne at the Golden Hall with her daughter seated aside her, and she can't think of any way to stop the performance without making things worse.

But the kings return victorious from war, the Prince and Princess return to Ithilien, and Emeldir learns that there are some things best not to discuss with her parents. Some years later, when her parents head off to to the cornerstone-laying of the restored Minas Ithil, she stays behind, and discovers in storage her mother's armor and her father's Ranger mask. Just about this time there's an incursion of raiders from Near Harad who object to the alliance with Gondor, and a mysterious masked and helmeted champion begins to ride the Harad road, protecting travelers. No one learns the champion's name, the champion hardly even speaks, so no one guesses it's a young woman.

Also, Bergil fits in somehow, by now he's being groomed to eventually succeed his father as Captain of the White Company, but we haven't gotten that far in the plot yet. Maybe he's got a role similar to Alfred of Batman comics. Or maybe Beregond has already retired and been succeeded by Bergil and he's the Alfred character, which he needs to hide from his son.

urban gypsy

Thu, Dec 27 2018, 8:51 am

imasoftov wrote:

Every word of this post was a gift especially for me. Hug

Vintage

Thu, Dec 27 2018, 1:49 pm

amother wrote:

Right. That's what I tell her too. It has come up in the past that a book will use the word "stupid" or "idiot" or the kids will be sarcastic and if it's not a big part of the book, I've let her read books in the past like that and just mention "you know that's not how we speak, but you can still read the book, just be aware when you get to this part that that's not the way a jewish child speaks" and that has been fine. I guess I can just see how this conversation is going to go
Her:what exactly makes this book so bad
Me: its just not appropriate, I don't want to get into the details, if I tell you about the inappropriate parts, then you might as well read the book.
Her: but mommy, I know when I read something that's not good middos that shouldn't learn from it! I'm not going to learn from it mommy! I love this series and the last book ends with such suspense! Please! I just want to know what's going to happen
Me: sorry sweetie, this one is not for us, I made a mistake by not checking it before, I'm sorry
Her: (sad, Curious, feeling like I don't trust her/wondering about the big bad world out there)
....am I being over dramatic here?

She has a very curious and intelligent mind!

A little out of the box maybe; on this one, since she has already read the second in the series: Can you read it (the third book) together with her and you do most of the reading, where you look ahead and smudge (I.e. "rewrite") sections while you are reading?

I have done that with my daughter before, having gotten myself into a similar pickle, and it worked wonders for the situation.

What do you think?

amother

Violet

Thu, Dec 27 2018, 8:19 pm

Thanks vintage, for reading through this and weighing in!
Here is how I ended up resolving this:

amother wrote:

Vintage

Fri, Dec 28 2018, 3:21 am

amother wrote:

Thanks vintage, for reading through this and weighing in!
Here is how I ended up resolving this:

My pleasure! I'm happy to see that how I dealt with a situation could be of help to someone
else.

It is so hard to find clean reading material, for all age groups. For a person who loves to read and loves words, it can be a challenge. The pollution is embedded as if in code, and it can have a stealth of its own.

amother

Violet

Sat, Dec 29 2018, 10:22 pm

Vintage wrote:

The pollution is embedded as if in code, and it can have a stealth of its own.

Well said!
What books have you had to smudge?
I had to do that with "marley and me"
It's an amazing, funny, heartwarming book about a dog, it's totally appropriate minus two scenes. I just edited them out when I read it out loud. No one was the wiser.

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