In article <grnBd.5052$z92.134544@twister.southeast.rr.com>, Jill wrote:
> I still say one of my favorite children's books ever is The Pink Motel by
> Carol Brink.
Since my 8-year-old son just re-read The Pink Motel this week
(choosing it out of his collection of several hundred previously-read
books since the weather was too wet to go to the library to get new
books), I suppose it is past time for me to read it.
I really appreciate getting recommendations of good books and authors
here, since we pretty much exhausted my memory of good kids' books
about a year ago. Although I was a voracious reader, I mainly read
science fiction, and the amount of good kid's science fiction is
really small (I read a lot of atrociously bad junk). My son has much
broader tastes, so gladly reads books that I would have bypassed at
his age. It is a pleasure now to read the books that he is reading.
Finding great newer authors, like Hilary McKay ("Saffy's Angel", "The
Exiles", ...), has also been a treat.
A couple of the children's librarians at the Santa Cruz Public Library
have been good sources also, but they are not always available, and
they are beginning to run out of suggestions also.
The lists of award winners are an occassion helpful for pointing out
books we missed, but there are a lot of really good books that never
made it to the award lists, and some not-so-great ones that were
mysteriously given awards.
Finding books that are worth reading is a little tricky, since he is
capable of reading books intended for much older readers, but is not
really interested in some of the adolescent problems that make up much
of the young-adult literature.
Sometimes we make mistakes, giving him books that he decides are not
interesting, or ones that we feel he is not really ready for. For
example, we checked out a number of Jane Yolen books for him to read,
having had some success with her stories before. I had not realized
that "The Devil's Arithmetic" contained a fairly realistic Holocaust
story, and would probably not have given him that to read for another
few years if I had known. (It is a good book, but not really suitable
for 8-year-olds.)
------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Karplus karplus RemoveThis @soe.ucsc.edu http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
(Senior member, IEEE) (Board of Directors, ISCB starting Jan 2005)
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Affiliations for identification only.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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