One of my fourth graders in religious school had Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, yesterday, and I asked her why she was reading it? wasn’t it terribly out-of-date?
She said “Oh no! It’s a classic! all the girls in my class are reading it.”
The other girls there for Hebrew class that day all assented.
I asked if they thought it seemed old-fashioned and odd, without computers and cell phones, and they said no, they didn’t really notice, and then one said “The feelings are the same.”
Hmmm.
It was interesting to hear that. I guess I wasn’t giving them enough credit, thinking they would either not understand, or would just be amused by a book from 1970. After all, I read Little House on the Prairie, and knew what things like butter churns, and oil lamps were before I started. I also read, reread, and loved Ballet Shoes (published in 1936) and knew what several obsolete items were, not to mention that I knew what lifts, trams, and an actor’s wrap were.
I also knew how to look things up.
It seems there is so much more going on now in a broad sense, that kids are expected to have less interest in depth. Depth of time, depth of other people’s experience. But I guess I’m wrong.
That’s good to know! The book may have experienced a revival of sorts when the film version was released, two years ago. I took my then-thirteen-year-old son to see it. He was reluctant, but afterward he thanked me and said it was good. (He had read and enjoyed Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing when he was nine, and I had given him Then Again, Maybe I Won’t when he was twelve – I think he read parts of it).
Oddly enough, the references to obsolete technology in some of Judy Blume’s other books were updated when they were republished in the 90s and 00s. (E.g. a scene where a character uses a mimeograph machine was changed to the character having to use the mimeograph because the photocopier was broken.)
CDs were added to one of the Fudge books. I’m guessing she figured it was useless to keep updating technology references. As for Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, it’s steadily gone out in the libraries where I’ve worked the past 3+ decades. Same for most of Judy Blume’s other books.
I read lots of old books when i was a kid. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that a book was inappropriate just because the characters don’t have cell phones.
She said it’s religious school. Jewish prayers are in Hebrew, so Jewish kids often learn Hebrew in religious school in the US. I didn’t even call it “religious school” as a kid, i called it “Hebrew school”.
As far as I know, the only update to Margaret was changing a few lines about belts & such (whatever women and girls used for menstruation in 1970) to tampons and pads as they became more ubiquitous.
Mrs. Homie jokes that Judy Blume needs to write a book about Margaret going through peri-menopause.
Hebrew school in America can be everything from a Jewish private school that handles all topics, to the Jewish equivalent of Sunday School, to a basically fully secular extracurricular course on Jewish history and the Hebrew language. It depends on who is offering Hebrew School.
I don’t find it unusual at all for kids that age reading a 55 years old book. When I was at that age in the seventies, much of the usual children’s literature fare were classics from the 19th century, so even much older, like Grimm’s fairy tales, Willhelm Busch’s “Max und Moritz”, Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn”, “Treasure Island”, and even abridged and kid appropriate versions of “Moby Dick” and “Robinson Crusoe”. I had read them all before I was ten and didn’t find them strange, in fact I loved to learn how things were different in the past.
We actually had “Sunday school” on Sunday morning, and “Hebrew school” Tues and Thurs afternoon. We learned about Jewish customs, ethics, and history on Sunday (with some crafts and cooking and songs thrown in) and we learned Hebrew language and prayers at Hebrew school. I was in the slow class, and didn’t learn much practical Hebrew. I did learn to recite a lot of prayers, and i knew what they all meant at the time. I still know a lot of key prayer words.
Yeah, some of my favorite and most memorable reads from when I was around 10 were old “classics” I found in the library, various Jules Verne books or King Solomon’s Mines.
Although I guess that was just before cell phones became common, so maybe my life was more similar to 19th century action-adventure heroes than the life of modern kids are to grounded books set in the 70s
Eta:
Yes to all these!
I didn’t read Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer until I moved to America, but the others, yep, same boat.
Although, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t reading kid appropriate versions… They were Hebrew translations of course but I’m pretty sure they were the full text. Like, I remember a major plot point in King Solomon’s Mines being a waterfall shaped like a lady peeing marking the way
In addition to the “classics” like what EinsteinsHund read, i read a lot of kids books that were old enough that people had ice boxes, and customs were just different.
Cheaper By The Dozen, Blueberries For Sal, Seven Day Magic, the Chronicles of Narnia…
Yes, right before I moved to the US so right around 10 I was on a HUGE “survival on a deserted island” kick.
My favorite part was the ecological and geographical stretches the authors would make to ensure their islands can have animals from Africa, Asia, and sometimes Australia as well.
When did people stop having ice boxes in the US? My dad is in his 60s and as a kid he’d go visit his older brother who worked in an ice factory. But maybe home fridges came to Israel later?
I’m in my sixties, and I’ve never seen an ice box that was still used as an ice box. I’ve never been in a place that had coal delivered, either, although that was common in children’s books.
