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Forum
-> Chinuch, Education & Schooling
do you let your kids read secular books?
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| yes, as long as I approve it first |
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67% |
[ 64 ] |
| yes, whatever they choose |
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16% |
[ 16 ] |
| usually not, with a few exceptions |
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12% |
[ 12 ] |
| never |
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3% |
[ 3 ] |
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| Total Votes : 95 |
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Faigy86
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 Tue, Dec 06 2011, 10:06 am
I think different readers expect to be getting something different out of different books. I was recently talking to my sister who likes the truer to life fiction novels, while I'd rather read something beyond my frame of reference. Obviously, in a well written book, you'll find something to identify with in the character development etc. but I always liked the books that allowed me to imagine worlds and people beyond where I was in life.
Growing up, one of my favorite series was called The Gymnasts - way outside of my life!! but I ate them up just reading about other worlds - and yes, there was ethnic diversity, but noone I related to.
We loved the All of a Kind Family books, and used to imagine playing out their characters, but again I didn't need to identify with the setting or anything else, it was just an opportunity to fantasize about a different life.
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groisamomma
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 10:06 am
| sequoia wrote: | Because a boy is just dying to read Babysitter's Club  |
Well, he liked the BY Times 
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zaq
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 10:41 am
| Raisin wrote: |
I agree. Note how in Harry potter, there are patels, a goldstein, and several black characters, to reflect the ethnic divesity of modern Britain. |
Yes, I noticed and appreciated that.
| Raisin wrote: |
Plenty of frum books are well written, (if you are comparing to hardy boys and babysitters club) you probably have read very few. |
Actually I have read quite a few, although not anything of very recent vintage, my children also having long since outgrown children's books.
Maybe my criteria for "well-written" differ from yours. Among other things, I expect perfect grammar and spelling. Like a physician, a publisher should "first, do no harm". Reading is one of the most powerful media by which children learn language. Publishers have a responsibility beyond ensuring that the reading material is kosher. I don't think I overstate the matter when I say that publishers who produce children's reading material with less-than-perfect grammar, spelling and usage are committing malpractice.
It doesn't matter that Yinglish speakers everywhere eat "by" their grandmother's house or are "bored of" the same old same old. "Eating by" is perfectly correct-- in Yiddish. However, if one is publishing a book in the English language, the usage must be English, and it must be proper English. In English, one eats "at" one's friend's house unless one is eating not inside the house but literally beside it, perhaps in a sukkah or on the lawn. I eat at my friend's house by the sea.
Like many people, I developed excellent language skills by reading countless books in which the grammar, spelling and usage were perfect. Even so, exposure to poor spelling and usage on online forums is having its corrosive effect, and I catch myself saying things like "bored of" and "eating by". How much worse when children are exposed to this sort of thing. There is more than one kind of "bad language" from which children must be protected.
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Ruchel
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 10:46 am
I totally agree with your last paragraph. Even in ENGLISH I used to spell and use grammar better, before the forums.
My mother, who has a linguistics PhD among other such degrees and a very classic education involving reading top quality books, stopped working and began to hang out on the internet... and recently caught herself being UNABLE to remember if she should write oeil or oeuil (eye), in her maternal language. Even by writing both of them and comparing.
Not even getting into how teachers write (especially in charedi schools?).
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nylon
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 10:54 am
| zaq wrote: | | groisamomma wrote: | | He literally eats books |
Really? He may have a condition called pica, characterized by eating inedible things.
(Sarcasm alert! Sarcasm alert!) |
There's a picture book called The Incredible Book-Eating Boy. My dd loves it.
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amother
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 11:17 am
Question for all who review their kids' books before letting them read them: How does that work practically speaking? Do your kids pick books at the library and you review before taking out / before giving it to them to read? Do you go alone and bring them home books?
My kids aren't reading yet, but I remember my mother telling us that some books were too old for us occasionally, and, stubborn child that I am, I just read it when she didn't see. I remember when I was around 7 or so taking out a book that my mother preread and decided not to give me. I threw a tantrum, ended up finding it under her bed and reading it (and not enjoying it either, I think it was some typical HS story that went right over my head.) I think she gave up on censoring our books around then.
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Ruchel
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 11:23 am
I buy cheap books on ebay, or we go to the book shop and if DD tantrums, we don't buy anything.
At the book shop I choose or she asks if we can take this one. She is young so for now I can precheck very easily. I guess later I'll tell kids to tell me what they want me to check, buy it cheap on ebay, and resell it if it's bad.
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Faigy86
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 11:24 am
| amother wrote: | Question for all who review their kids' books before letting them read them: How does that work practically speaking? Do your kids pick books at the library and you review before taking out / before giving it to them to read? Do you go alone and bring them home books?
My kids aren't reading yet, but I remember my mother telling us that some books were too old for us occasionally, and, stubborn child that I am, I just read it when she didn't see. I remember when I was around 7 or so taking out a book that my mother preread and decided not to give me. I threw a tantrum, ended up finding it under her bed and reading it (and not enjoying it either, I think it was some typical HS story that went right over my head.) I think she gave up on censoring our books around then. |
I'm going to say that this has to do with the general chinuch attitude and if the children trust their parents decisions etc. If you tell your child not to eat something because it doesn't have a good hechsher - does he listen? If you tell them it is bed time, or they need to come inside, do they question or try to sneak around the decision. All of those are indicators as to whether children will listen to things their parents tell them whether or not they understand. The other question is, maybe you needed a better explanation of why the book wasn't appropriate for you, and a better understanding would have helped you resist the temptation.
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shabbatiscoming
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 11:53 am
| Raisin wrote: | one of naomi ragens books is about DL people living on a yishuv.
I also love reading about other cultures, but I think reading about your own culture as well is important.
chanchy, I loved british boarding school books! chalet school, enid blyton, billy bunter and lots more. | I meant moreso for kids/teens.
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tikva18
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 12:24 pm
| zaq wrote: | | Raisin wrote: |
I agree. Note how in Harry potter, there are patels, a goldstein, and several black characters, to reflect the ethnic divesity of modern Britain. |
Yes, I noticed and appreciated that.
| Raisin wrote: |
Plenty of frum books are well written, (if you are comparing to hardy boys and babysitters club) you probably have read very few. |
Actually I have read quite a few, although not anything of very recent vintage, my children also having long since outgrown children's books.
Maybe my criteria for "well-written" differ from yours. Among other things, I expect perfect grammar and spelling. Like a physician, a publisher should "first, do no harm". Reading is one of the most powerful media by which children learn language. Publishers have a responsibility beyond ensuring that the reading material is kosher. I don't think I overstate the matter when I say that publishers who produce children's reading material with less-than-perfect grammar, spelling and usage are committing malpractice.
It doesn't matter that Yinglish speakers everywhere eat "by" their grandmother's house or are "bored of" the same old same old. "Eating by" is perfectly correct-- in Yiddish. However, if one is publishing a book in the English language, the usage must be English, and it must be proper English. In English, one eats "at" one's friend's house unless one is eating not inside the house but literally beside it, perhaps in a sukkah or on the lawn. I eat at my friend's house by the sea.
Like many people, I developed excellent language skills by reading countless books in which the grammar, spelling and usage were perfect. Even so, exposure to poor spelling and usage on online forums is having its corrosive effect, and I catch myself saying things like "bored of" and "eating by". How much worse when children are exposed to this sort of thing. There is more than one kind of "bad language" from which children must be protected. |
AGREED! And what kills me is the lack of 'ly endings on adverbs and adjectives. If I'm reading aloud to my children, then I will correct it. But the kicker for me is "on line" as "he was standing ON line". What? I had never heard of this until something I had written for a Jewish publisher was PUBLISHED incorrectly with "on line". Now I see it more places; however, all are Jewish. (And in case you did not know, the correct way to say that is "IN line".)
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tikva18
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 12:26 pm
| amother wrote: | Question for all who review their kids' books before letting them read them: How does that work practically speaking? Do your kids pick books at the library and you review before taking out / before giving it to them to read? Do you go alone and bring them home books?
My kids aren't reading yet, but I remember my mother telling us that some books were too old for us occasionally, and, stubborn child that I am, I just read it when she didn't see. I remember when I was around 7 or so taking out a book that my mother preread and decided not to give me. I threw a tantrum, ended up finding it under her bed and reading it (and not enjoying it either, I think it was some typical HS story that went right over my head.) I think she gave up on censoring our books around then. |
Yes. If my kids choose books at the library, I do a cursory check before we leave - which is simple with picture books. With my older kids if a theme seems off then it doesn't get check out. After we get home, I will pre-read what they are going to read unless I'm certain that it's okay. This generally works out as I am a fast reader.
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Chayalle
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 1:58 pm
| chanchy123 wrote: | | TranquilityAndPeace wrote: | | zaq wrote: |
I would have appreciated a book about twins named Debbie and Danny who lived in a fifth-floor apartment in the Big City and passed a pretzel vendor on the way to the subway to visit their Grandma. IOW, not necessarily something heavily Jewish--even as a kid I understood that we were a minority and writers were appealing to the mass market--but something pareve that I could relate to, not something from a completely foreign world that had no connection to my own, or possibly anyone's.
Did anyone, ever, really call their parents "Mother" and "Father" the way they did in the books? |
Remember the 'All of a Kind Family Books'?
Those actually confused me a bit, as they were Jewish like me, but not frum, which I don't think I fully grasped at the age of 8. Remember how Mama hid pennies in the front room, and the girls could keep the pennies they found when dusting? |
I also loved this series, my mother loved them as a child and got me all of them (including the last one Ella of all of the kind of family that I read as a teen). These were some of the first books I ever read, and I think may have started reading them out loud with my mother. I remember being confused about how frum or not these people were, and my mother just said that these were different times and they were not entirely frum (bear in mind I was living in Israel and had no idea about Conservative Jews).
I was going to say that the first time I ever heard about Christimis was in one of the books (I think I was maybe 8) even before this series came up.
Growing up in Israel I had plenty of books about Jewish people, not necessarily exactly like me (they didn't come out until I was much older), but enough that I could identify with. I loved reading all those books mentioned in the thread, all about WASPY WASPS. They were good stories and I really couldn't care less where they took place. However, I could identify with people living in the "country" as I grew up in a small yishuv in the Shomron, in a similar atmosphere to some of the American books I was reading.
I read almost all of my mother's old books (no one here read Trixie Beldon or those British Dorm school books?, how about Cherry Ames or the career girl books?)
I admit the occasional frum books I read were refreshing, but I had no problem with the secular books. Sometimes it would take me a while to realize that the book I was reading was a "frum" book. I don't know if that even makes sense. But even those were nothing like my life (maybe that's why I didn't always get they were Jewish books) - they weren't about DL settlers in Israel, they were about Moishe in NY or Chavi in Bnei Brak. Sometimes about as foreign to me as Ramona. |
Cherry Ames and Trixie Belden.
Anyone here like thee "Three Investigators"? I loved that series. And The Great Brain books. I also liked the Green Sky Trilogy, and The Velvet Room.
As a teen I liked books by Daphne Du Maurier - though I must say some were cleaner than others.
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Fox
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 4:38 pm
| chocmom wrote: | | Am I the only one who loved that books were about people totally unlike me, with different cultures, locations etc? I learnt so much about the world that way, books were a total escape! |
Same here! I have to admit that I have very little interest in frum books -- even if they were to be short-listed for the Booker, Nobel, or Pulitzer. Reading is like a vacation for me, and I prefer not to spend it examining the same problems I left behind!
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PinkFridge
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 4:41 pm
| Fox wrote: | | chocmom wrote: | | Am I the only one who loved that books were about people totally unlike me, with different cultures, locations etc? I learnt so much about the world that way, books were a total escape! |
Same here! I have to admit that I have very little interest in frum books -- even if they were to be short-listed for the Booker, Nobel, or Pulitzer. Reading is like a vacation for me, and I prefer not to spend it examining the same problems I left behind! |
Which problems do you prefer to examine?
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Fox
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 4:43 pm
| tikva18 wrote: | | But the kicker for me is "on line" as "he was standing ON line". What? I had never heard of this until something I had written for a Jewish publisher was PUBLISHED incorrectly with "on line". Now I see it more places; however, all are Jewish. (And in case you did not know, the correct way to say that is "IN line".) |
I tell my kids that they aren't allowed to stand "on line." It's bad for the computers.
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PinkFridge
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 4:50 pm
| Fox wrote: | | tikva18 wrote: | | But the kicker for me is "on line" as "he was standing ON line". What? I had never heard of this until something I had written for a Jewish publisher was PUBLISHED incorrectly with "on line". Now I see it more places; however, all are Jewish. (And in case you did not know, the correct way to say that is "IN line".) |
I tell my kids that they aren't allowed to stand "on line." It's bad for the computers. |
Even if the computer is high enough?
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Fox
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 4:53 pm
| PinkFridge wrote: | | Fox wrote: | | chocmom wrote: | | Am I the only one who loved that books were about people totally unlike me, with different cultures, locations etc? I learnt so much about the world that way, books were a total escape! |
Same here! I have to admit that I have very little interest in frum books -- even if they were to be short-listed for the Booker, Nobel, or Pulitzer. Reading is like a vacation for me, and I prefer not to spend it examining the same problems I left behind! |
Which problems do you prefer to examine? |
Well, right now I'm reading Sue Grafton's V is for Vengeance, so I'm wrapped up in Kinsey Millhone's world of 1986. Would I enjoy it as much if Kinsey were called Rivkie and had to juggle making Pesach and being mekarev her non-frum neighbor while staking out the mob-connected shoplifting ring? No -- I don't want to hear about Kinsey's/Rivkie's worries about Pesach. If I'm going to live vicariously through a character's experiences, I want something significantly different from my own everyday existence.
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BetsyTacy
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 5:20 pm
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I agree, Fox. Reading about the way Kinsey deals with clothes shopping (she only has the one black dress) is a lot more relaxing than reading about the problems of finding tznius clothes. I already deal with that one in real life!
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Fox
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 5:39 pm
| BetsyTacy wrote: | | Reading about the way Kinsey deals with clothes shopping (she only has the one black dress) is a lot more relaxing than reading about the problems of finding tznius clothes. |
Hey, Kinsey's one dress is black! She'd fit right in! I guess she might take a little grief for the material (polyester -- perhaps containing carcinogenic compounds), but it would help her blend in if she ever has to track a bad guy to Lakewood!
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BetsyTacy
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Tue, Dec 06 2011, 5:42 pm
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No, Fox, clearly "W" is going to be for Williamsburg!
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