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Dear Parents of the cute children who come into the Children's Room of the public library,
Get this through your heads: we are not School. Although committed to "lifelong learning" in our mission statement, this is just a ruse to make Reading For Fun more palatable come funding time. Your lovely child slogs for nine months each year through the soul-crushing graded readers, the No-Child-Left-Interested required curricula, and, my personal bugaboo, the Dreaded Accelerated Reader tests. Don't make summer just another opportunity to make reading a deadly chore.
Do not:
Insist your child read only at or above her reading level during the summer. No one really likes the Tiger Mom.
Tell your child something is too old or too babyish for him.
Shame your child by remarking in front of the entire library that she "didn't finish the books she checked out last time," so she can't have that many this time. Books are not brussel sprouts. They don't go bad if they aren't read. The only reason to limit books is if they tend to get lost.
Ask the librarian to back you up on your opinion of the books. Hell's bells, I'm a 57 year old married woman! I don't have the same tastes as a nine year old boy. Okay, maybe I don't necessarily have his tastes. Maybe he doesn't like the Three Stooges and comic books - ahem, I mean Graphic Novels. Oooo, look! Captain Underpants!
Chances are, if your kid can relax during the summer and read something she enjoys (for a change), she might decide that reading isn't the big drag it was during the school year. Who knows, it might make a big difference in her life. So lay off the kids. If you insist on riding their backs even in summer, just make sure it's something other than reading, like piano lessons and science camp until it runs out their ears. There's nothing sadder in this room than seeing a kid be told he can't have a particular book for some reason. Worse yet, making him come up and shuffle his feet while he tells me that he can't have that book.
Oh, and about complaints I've heard about Junie B. Jones - get over it. You think your kid doesn't know bad language or behavior when she sees it? [I'm still trying to figure out what Junie B.'s "bad language" is.] You haven't taught your child what kind of behavior you expect? He doesn't know the difference between fiction and reality? Perhaps you just need to develop your sense of humor. I understand that if you lack one, you might find the rest of us behaving irrationally. Just think about it.
5 comments:
There is nothing I love better than meeting a fellow traveler. I could have written this myself--and probably have :D
Parents get annoyed because Junie B speaks incorrect English and they don't want her as a role model for their little tiger cubs. Thing is, I read a NY Times interview w/Barbara Park what I should have realized. Junie B speaks CORRECT English. That is, English if it didn't have "exceptions to the rule"
As for the behavior which one parent recently called "saucy", I admitted that both my daughters had loved Junie B and that at 16 and 12 they are now noted for their lovely manners.
That is, unless they're home with their parents, that is (!)
And anyone who reads those books TO their kids deserves what they get--like "Captain Underpants", these books were NOT meant for adult consumption!
Bless you. And hang in there, the fun has just begun, hasn't it?
Applause
Amen, I say. (God bless my mother, who never much cared what I was reading, probably because HER nose was always in a book.)
How about making the librarians clean up the vomit after you are so "embarrassed" by your child chuckin' up the Chik-fil-a meal they got for reading 40 books. Then asking for another Chik-fil-a free meal certificate as you are cleaning up said vomit.
Bravo!
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