tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post1330395212793469218..comments2023-08-03T04:54:54.068-04:00Comments on Abacaxi Mamão: Why do you read?Abacaxi Mamaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06604184268628243496noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-26842912469298148072007-12-24T13:42:00.000-05:002007-12-24T13:42:00.000-05:00Hey, cool!It sounds like it was the same, or a sim...Hey, cool!<BR/><BR/>It sounds like it was the same, or a similar, series. Now that you mention it, most of each book <I>was</I> about the famous person's childhood. The longer ago the famous person lived, the more myth there probably was in that accounting. Still, it was a good technique. When I was in third grade, I don't know if I would have wanted to read so much about George Washington's war campaigns.Abacaxi Mamaohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06604184268628243496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1625967428725475512007-12-23T20:45:00.000-05:002007-12-23T20:45:00.000-05:00I definitely also went through that phase where I ...I definitely also went through that phase where I read the entire biography section in the children's library! As a middle school teacher, I re-read some of those biographies, and realized that most of them (if it's the same series) spend about 5 out of 7 chapters discussing the famous American's childhood and only a couple of chapters on the person's adult accomplishments-- what he or she was famous for. Of course, often the description of the person's childhood foreshadowed his or her later interests, but the books definitely focus on portraying these famous adults as children and how their lives were shaped early on. What a brilliant idea, no? Although I do remember writing a report for 3rd grade social studies class on Harry Truman that was similarly slanted and having the teacher ask me to include more details of oh, say, his presidency and other unimportant parts of his life...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-85163355477223898392007-12-10T16:25:00.000-05:002007-12-10T16:25:00.000-05:00It's interesting that you lump together reading, a...It's interesting that you lump together reading, and playing games on Shabbat. I have a letter written in 1910 by my great-great-aunt Z (sister of my great-grandmother L whom your middle name is after) to my grandfather. This was the Russian intelligentsia side of the family. Z and her husband had just moved from Europe to a small town in Michigan, the only place in America where her husband, a chemical engineer, could find a job. It drove Z crazy that their lowbrow neighbors spent most of their free time playing cards, instead of having highbrow intellectual discussions, as she was used to. Nowadays, of course, those neighbors would be spending all their time watching TV, and it would only be the highbrows who play cards (and read) in their free time.<BR/><BR/>There was one book that got me hooked on reading, when I was in 2nd grade: Elmer and the Dragon, by Ruth Gannett. I also liked imaging myself as part of different worlds, but unlike you, I preferred them to be fantasy worlds, rather than real worlds. Though I also enjoyed realistic fiction when I was a child, e.g. Mark Twain, Arthur Ransome, and acquired more of a taste for it as I got older. I was somewhat disappointed that none of my children liked fantasy novels quite as much as I did, though MLG liked the Narnia books, and I recently learned that MFG read one of my favorite books, Eleanor Farjeon's The Fair of St. James, when she was 15 (the same age I first read it) and really liked it.<BR/><BR/>I agree that there is nothing wrong with reading junk when you're kid, especially if you're reading good books as well. At the same age that I was entranced by the Narnia books, I also really liked reading Superman comics, possibly for some of the same reasons, as someone once pointed out to me. I don't think I ever lost my taste for Superman comics, at least ones from that era, but I think it would be accurate to say that my taste for them stayed constant, while my taste for other kinds of literature grew a lot in comparison, and broadened to include mainstream novels, and biographies and autobiographies, which constitute much of my pleasure reading today. At the same as all this was going on, I read lots of science fact books, and my enjoyment of that has continued to grow with time, while expanding into other non-fiction categories like history.<BR/><BR/>And yes, watching TV and movies is not the same. I think it has to do with the fact that when you are reading, you are actively constructing scenes in your mind. Interestingly, that is even more true if you are reading something in a language that you don't know as well as English (though you have to know it enough to be able to follow the plot). I find that I enjoy reading Orson Scott Card's science fiction novels in Hebrew translation more than I enjoy reading them in English, perhaps because I have to fill in more things with my own imagination.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com