…from book sales at her school. In among the usual horror novels and Mad Libs, I found:
**The Boy Next Door
There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom
No Boys Allowed**
I sense a trend. MilliCal’s gonna be 10 this summer.
Yes, I know. There are fresh horrors waiting at 11, 12, and 13, too. Why the hell did we, at the cost of eyes and mind and larynx, teach them to read before they even went to school, if all the good books were gone twenty years before they got to the fifth grade?
School book sales are the worst. They buy from catalogs that do not, shall we say, ever include anything resembling a “scholastic text.” You may as well be upset that MilliCal might choose chocolate over broccoli, if the former’s lit in neon and the vegetable’s covered in sludge.
You’re right to be upset, it’s not her fault, it’ll happen six or seven more times before she gets her own credit card and signs up for the Romance-of-the-Month Club.
Look. Everybody likes crap. Including you. Your crap isn’t her crap. Don’t compare her crap to Shakespeare, compare it to your crap. Have a drink. Feel better. That’s all there is.
Those books are by Louis Sachar, though: Newbery-award winning author of Holes. It’s light comedy, but it’s not dreck–he’s pretty good. Read 'em yourself and see what you think.
I don’t think the trend Cal sees is that his daughter is buying crap books.
Yea, books about boys seem to be the trend. This coming from a guy with a daughter who just turned 11.
Enjoy,
Steven
I remember being that age and buying books from an order form at school. At one time I owned nearly every book Albert Payson Terhune ever wrote, and more than anything in the world I wanted a collie like Lad. My parents were utterly disgusted that I couldn’t buy Robinson Crusoe or *Two Years Before the Mast * from that catalog. My father forced me to read, at age 12, *Caine Mutiny * because he thought the stuff I was reading was too light. This from a man who read Argosy magazine.
Bingo.
MilliCal gets along well with they boys in her classes because she’ll do boy stuff and hasn’t gotten caught up in girl-cliquish stuff.
But I think I’m kinda happy that she’s going to an all-girl camp this summer, too.
My 10-yr old is doing the same. Is it sad that on our last shopping trip to the bookstore I was happy she bought these two books - “The Day My Butt Went Psycho” and some disgusting book I can’t recall the title of (or maybe I intentionally blocked it out).
CAL! There is a series of books titled TTFN, L8r G8R, and TTYL. These books are very appealing to elementary age girls because the covers are really bright and cute and the story is told completely as a series of IM’s. These books are written for and about high school age girls and have really mature themes. I’m not a prude about talking to my girl about these things, but these books were a shock. So I just wanted to give you a heads up.
anyone else read books as boobs at first glance in the title?
Don’t rush things. I have enough problems.
Me.
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