Comments on: Happy Banned Book Week!

By: Nick Kiddle

Nick Kiddle — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:45:37 +0000

it’s been awhile and I don’t think I ever knew there was a prequel, but… I don’t recall the incestuous marriage bit. Were they first cousins or something?

Uncle/aunt and niece/nephew, IIRC, possibly with a half- in there somewhere.

I swear on all that’s holy, I wasn’t obsessed with the book. I just have a retentive memory, honest.

By: raging red

raging red — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:04:21 +0000

I just read other stuff during class and drove my teachers crazy.

Yeah, I was always reading books of my own in school. I’d finish whatever assignment we were doing and then pick up a book I’d brought from home. My teachers never said a word about it, probably because I was also a big talker in class, so I’m sure they were just glad that I was keeping my mouth shut.

By: ks

ks — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 15:56:52 +0000

I was never censored in my reading materials either. I was an early reader and in fact one of my earliest memories is how happy my mom was when I finally learned how to read silently because all the reading aloud was distracting her from her own books. And I was also way ahead of my grade level in reading, but I didn’t get any special classes or bumped up. I just read other stuff during class and drove my teachers crazy.

By: Rhiannon

Rhiannon — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 15:10:27 +0000

I don’t understand why you would ever take a book away from someone because it wasn’t the appropriate level.

Wow! I NEVER had that problem. No one EVER told me I couldn’t read something! *though I did get held back in reading levels by my kindergarten teacher until my first grade teacher realized I was actually reading 2 levels higher and bumped me up to it). I don’t understand telling a child that they can’t read something because *they* don’t think the kid would understand it. Screw that, at least the kid’s reading! Who cares if they understand it or not, if they’re interested that’s all that should matter!

By: Rhiannon

Rhiannon — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 15:06:14 +0000

no one can ever find out she had children by her incestuous marriage

it’s been awhile and I don’t think I ever knew there was a prequel, but… I don’t recall the incestuous marriage bit. Were they first cousins or something?

By: zuzu

zuzu — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 15:05:12 +0000

My elementary school had open classrooms with first through third graders in the same classes. For reading, we were split into groups by reading level. I’d been pulled out of kindergarten, which was separate from 1-3 at that school, to do reading with the 1-3s, since I came in knowing how to read and they didn’t want to hold me back (but at the same time, my mother didn’t want me to skip grades for social and sibling-rivalry reasons). So by the time I hit third grade, I’d already gone through every level they had, but everyone else in my level had moved onto the middle school, so I was all by myself. They had to scramble to find me appropriate stuff to read, and I wound up doing self-study and reading to the younger kids.

I don’t remember them giving me novels or anything like that, though; they were pretty wedded to their textbook-format reading materials. I do feel like that slowed me down.

By: Julie

Julie — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 14:56:14 +0000

My parents actually went to school and made them let me take out books that were the appropriate reading level for me. I was in third grade and they were making us take out “I can read” books and limiting us to two. My dad went and demanded I be allowed to take out up to four of my choice, because I tested at some insanely high reading level and the “I can read books” took me approximately two minutes to complete. They also moved me to a sixth grade reading class. I was lucky though, because I went to a really small school where they could do stuff like that. I remember reading Romeo and Juliet in fourth grade and while my teacher was always saying stuff like “isn’t that too hard for you?” he never took it away. I don’t understand why you would ever take a book away from someone because it wasn’t the appropriate level.

By: Jill

Jill — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:20:12 +0000

Sally – I think she objected to the length, and also thought I wouldn’t understand it since I was a stupid little thrid-grader who alternated between books like Little Women and Sweet Valley High. My mom was furious with her…

My room mate is getting her master’s in English education right now, and is student teaching in a New York City public school. They’re instructed to take books away from kids if the books are at too high of a reading level for them. It’s fucked.

By: Nick Kiddle

Nick Kiddle — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 20:19:08 +0000

>>I thought it was the mother who was trying to kill the children, but it’s been a while since I read it.

>I’m pretty sure the real baddie was the grandmother. The mother just went along with it because she was weak and pathetic and couldn’t resist the grandmother’s evil wiles.

The mother was all sweetness-and-light where the grandmother was brimstone sermons and crazed fundie nonsense, but the mother was quite clearly implicated in the poisoning. She was weak enough to do anything for her inheritance.

By: Lean Left » Blog Archive » Ignorance Week

Lean Left » Blog Archive » Ignorance Week — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:18:48 +0000

[...] p and because anything that scares the timid must be worth reading. . . . Hat tip: Jill at Feministe
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27t [...]