Friday, March 24, 2006

Education #1.

What your children are reading (NB. This has been published)
by
Robert L. Fielding

We’ve been reading recently what children should and shouldn’t read (Kuneenah Dynab-City Times, Khaleej Times 23.12.05 pp9), but looking at the top ten list of books for children, it seems that fantasy is high up the list.

Whether that is a bad thing or a good thing, I leave parents and the experts to decide.

Here is a précis of that list.

Fantasy is every child’s number one, with guess who – Harry Potter the best known of these. Here are is list:-
 “The Tale of Desperaux”: the story of a mouse, a princess, some soup and a spool of thread By Kate DiCamillo (illustrated)
 “The Conch Bearer”: A boy, a girl and an old man go on a hazardous journey from Calcutta to return a shell with magical properties to the Himalayas. By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
 “The Day the Babies Crawled Away”: a small child saves other small children when they escape a fair and head for danger. By Peggy Rathman
 “Elvis the Rooster Almost Goes to Heraven”: Finding that the sun can rise without him, this rooster tries to find out who he really is. By Denys Cazet
 “George Washington’s Teeth”: A tale told in verse about the first US President’s dental problems. (illustrated). By Deborah Chandra and Madelaine Comora
 “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”: Harry’s pain and frustration as an adolescent in his fifth year at Hogwart’s.
 “Harvesting Hope”: Rousing stuff about a man who organized farmworkers in California (illustrated). By Kathleen Krull
 “The Man Who Walked Between the Towers”: Tells the story of the man who tightrope walked between the World Trade Center twin towers in 1974 (illustrated). By Mordicai Gerstein
 “The River Between Us”: Set in the American Civil War, this story recounts how a family’s life changes after being visited by two mysterious women from New Orleans.
 “The Spiderwick Chronicles”: A story about children fighting their way through unfortunate events in a scary, old house.
www.sfgate.com
The value of fantasy in children’s literature is that readers can find scenarios that go outside their own realm of experience, and in so doing expand their minds to realize that the world out there is full of possibilities and also that everyone is special in their own special way. From literature, children can learn tolerance and creativity, solutions to problems, and new ways to express themselves – all that from fantasy – sounds good to me!
Robert L. Fielding

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