Latest adventure with the Grandlads:
As to be expected, the latest weekend visit to the campground ended with a crisis (family self-generated). Seems that a hour before leaving my daughter announced that Grandlad Alex could not read the new book I brought him until he finished reading the two books required for his ninth grade honors English summer reading Program. Naturally, Alex had never seen the lists and would never be able to pick a book to read from a list anyway.
Fine, say I, I’ll get the list and we can go book-shopping next weekend.
Nope! He has to read the books this coming week.
Okay, if I get the list and make some recommendations, can you get him to a Library next week?
Nope! We do not have time in our busy schedule to take him to a Library.
(Note: she doesn’t like me taking him to the Rehoboth library because she does not want the responsibility of seeing that the books get returned.)
I did engineer a few hours reprieve on their returning home so I could “work on the problem”. (Please note: it is 7PM on a Sunday evening.)
I dashed home, found the lists, printed out same and found a bookstore open until 11PM.
Woody and I Dashed back to the trailer, rounded up Alex and headed downtown. On the drive, Woody and I went over some of the titles to generally disinterested Alex.
I did offer him the following observation:
A. You let us help you pick out two books, tonight, at the store which you will take home and read, or
B. Your Mother will pick out two books from the Library on her way home from work and she’ll make you read them.
Your choice – Door A or Door B.
(“Make him an offer he can’t refuse.”)
Fortunately, the book store had most of the listed titles in stock; unfortunately, the paperback editions offered had lousy cover art and damn little descriptive matter. And to make matters even worse, the blurbs on the rear covers all dealt with the significance (literary and/or social) of the work and told nothing about the character of the book that would entice a young reader to open the cover. Nothing to suggest why anyone would read “Cather in the Rye” or :”Brave New World”. “Heart of Darkness” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” sound downright boring. Selections like “Tom Jones” and “Gulliver’s Travels” are a lost cause on a lad who does not know what “satire” means.
With our help, he finally settled on “Slaughter House Five” (Multiple time periods, fire bombing of Dresden), “1984” (Sci-Fi), and “Animal Farm” (really a thin book) from which he’ll choose two.
Once over this hurdle, we’ll work picking other selections for future use (the list is a High School AP English list, so it will be revisited. Knowing his sense of humor, I’m sure he would enjoy “Candide”, “Tom Jones”, and “Gulliver’s Travels”.
der Brucer
Note: neither of his parents had read any of the books on the list; at least Woody and I were able to discuss most of them from personal experience.
