Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works (via Mowser)

Being intellectual.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

The Intellectual Devotional books, if placed in the bathroom, are basically a snootier version of the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series.

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Labels: book reviews

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Conflicted Charisma.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Charisma Magazine is a seriously conflicted publication.

It's a Christian magazine for "charismatics" and pentecostal Christians, which is, in itself, a seriously conflicted vein of belief. It's made up of conservative believers, Word-Faith, Name-it-Claim-it...the whole nine yards. To put out a magazine for such a wide (and often disagreeing) audience leads to a kind of bi-polar content rivaled by none.

For example, in the current May 2008 issue, we have, in selected order of appearance:

The excellent writing of J. Lee Grady¹ talking about that dirty little secret: God Loves Arabs, Too. He gently takes Christians to task for their unquestioning support of Israel (in a magazine heavily saturated with pro-Israel articles and ads) and not taking into account our brothers and sisters in Christ who are persecuted not only by the Jews of Israel, but by Muslim Arabs.
The Feedback page where letters from readers comment about past issues. In these letters, a past article about money and Christian ministries and Sen. Charles Grassley's efforts, as well as another article by Grady on pride in ministry, raise the most uproar. One reader writes about how, in the middle of an article that featured a humble missionary, he found an advertisement for a "love cruise" with two prominent Christian leaders promoting themselves. Joyce Meyer's regular column, Straight Talk. Meyer's was a topic of discussion in the Feedback section in regards to Grassley's probe. An ad for Feed the Children, featuring images of starving and desperate children from Africa.
An ad for Meyer's latest book The Secret to True Happiness. An ad for TBN's Holy Land amusement park. Some miscellaneous blurbs, ads, and articles until we get to...
...an article pressing Christians to pay for bomb shelters for Israeli citizens. Etc.

The magazine has good stuff in there, but it takes a serious deep breath before diving in. Some of the ads and the blessing/word-faith/get-rich-be-blessed crap drive me insane, particularly when placed next to an ad for starving people in need or articles on persecution of fellow Christians in another country who may not benefit from knowing an American Christian's "true secret to happiness"² in their geographic location, and also might appreciate some of that money that would be going for a bomb shelter in a wealthy nation to head their way for a few meals and a roof over their head.

I would just love to know the editorial policy, and sit in on some of the meetings, since the advertising conflicts with some of the articles which are written by writers/ministers subtly taking shots at other writers/ministers' beliefs or behavior.

Crazy.

I don't think my conscience could handle working there.

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¹Grady is a favorite writer of mine, in part because of his book 10 Lies the Church Tells Women (a gift from a reader following this incident, and a book I recommend for women). He is a regular writer for the magazine and is usually pretty blunt.

²Which, since it only applies to very few (actually) geographic locations on this planet, makes it not really a "true" secret since it wouldn't be a universal truth. More a selective truth, or truth with a catch.

Labels: christian books, magazines

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Socrates cafe.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

I so wanted to like the book.

The cover was entrancing.

Socrates Cafe: A fresh taste of philosophy, by Christopher Phillips, should have been my perfect book. I love questions. I never have answers. When I teach Sunday School, it's 95 percent questions. I throw them out, one after another. I rarely state anything when I teach, whether it's an art class or otherwise. Questions. I would love to sit around with some people in a coffee house* and just talk deep stuff and ask questions and bat around theories and leave with more questions than on arrival.

This is, again, because I have very few answers.

Jesus answered in questions.

The Socratic Method is great for lovers of questions. Questions, the great teacher. Questions, the friend and lie-detector of those who despise fake know-it-all arrogance. Questions, water for the intellectually parched. Questions, the friend of those who don't like being told what to do. Questions, the friend of those who won't take an answer as the final answer, but as a spring board to another question. Questions, oxygen for the curious.

And this book? A friend of sleep. I can't get past the first 50 pages. I've tried three successive times.

Why?

Links:

Socrates Cafe online: Philosopher.org Socrates Cafe Meetup Socrates Cafe MN

If you want the book, I'll send it to you. Just email me your mailing address. Maybe you can get to page 51.

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* I hate coffee. I'd be having hot chocolate, the drink of the gods.

Labels: book reviews

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Jesus for President.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post

The book, besides being beautifully designed and visual astounding, is direct and harsh.

Good.

I can't get it out of my mind, because even though some things I may not have swallowed whole, I realized very much that Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw were putting into words the things I have been struggling with increasingly over the years: The church and politics (and no, the book doesn't urge support or give a free pass to either party). What is the church. What about the poor.

Topics like that. Things I've not fully been able to honestly say have been dealt with in my own life.

Jesus For President: Politics for ordinary radicals has the potential to make angry those with minds locked into stone and tradition, and rip open the hearts of those who already sensed something is very amiss with how we "do church" now. This is a book for those who like Jesus but don't want to be a Christian because they think they have to become a member of the Republican party in order to follow Christ.

Claiborne talks about more than just politics and the church. He very directly calls the reader on what our consumerism and American lifestyle translates into for our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world. He covers everything from the culture of Jesus to our culture of waste, from global economy to eating locally produced food and items. He talks about resources, sustainability, the "enough" policy vs. rampant "gotta have more", and...sweatshops.

I have a friend in Nicaragua who I've started to help support. She works in a sweatshop. It's a terrible job. I'm so proud of her for working and earning money, but it's a terrible job that is destroying her health. When we go to Nicaragua, we often buy clothes on sale and take them down to distribute. Imagine my horror when, pawing through the clearance racks at Old Navy for skirts and shirts, I found a shirt with a label that said "Made in Nicaragua."

She might not have made that shirt. Chances are good that she didn't. But what was I doing? In search of the cheapest stuff, we are encouraging corporations to find slave-like labor to feed the American appetite for "cheaper, and more." How horrible it would be to bring down clothes to give to the people who, in agonizing conditions for low pay, made them. Claiborne provides so much material in this book, ranging from scripture to anecdotes to suggested alternatives.

Obviously, some of the things Claiborne suggests in the realm of what we buy aren't going to work as well in the middle of nowhere North Dakota as they do in the heart of Philadelphia. Handmade sandals, from recycled rubber, mean that about six months out of the year my toes are going to turn black and fall off. However, that is not the point. And there are things we do -- deliberate choices in what we do and do not buy or support -- that can answer as an alternative to some of the ways Claiborne is personally putting his convictions in action. In general, we need to be deliberate and not thoughtless. Americans are thoughtless, and are trained to keep an eye on the bottom line which is, essentially, a focus on "cheaper to buy so I can buy more."

I'm not giving this book a fair review. It hit me like a wall, and I need to read it again. All I can say is that you should read it, and that you ought to be prepared for the message. Unlike most Christian books which tell you how to find power, control and blessings in life, this book isn't going to make you feel warm and fuzzy and give you six easy steps to do it. It is, instead, a call to pulling back the curtain and seeing the wizard for the first time.

This is a book that needs to be read. If you want to be like a lot of Christians and get all hung up on "right theology" and play that old "discern and debate" game, fine. But for those of you who have felt like something is not right and you know American consumer culture is not Christian and you are uneasy about something you've not been able to put your finger on, read this book.

Other Links:

Video: Claiborne talking about the book.
Out of Ur: Book review of Jesus for President (part 1) Out of Ur: Book review of Jesus for President (part 2) Chuckp3.com: Jesus for President Zack Exley: Jesus for President, a book review for atheists (part 1) (part 2)
The official Jesus for President web site Jesus Creed: Jesus for President (brief mention among other interesting books)
Claiborne and the Cedarville controversy

Labels: book reviews, christian books, recommended reading

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Away with the book guilt.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

I generally have an almost unbearable load of book guilt.

You know, book guilt. When you have a high percentage of books as yet unread in your personal library.

I have about 700-800 books. I got rid of about six box load of books a few years back, sending them overseas as part of the Books for Soldiers program.

But, I still have books nearly completely surrounding me in my bedroom, studio/office, and the hallway in between. Many I bought, shelved, and never got to reading.

I know I'm not alone in this.

Anyway, book guilt. I could think of nothing good from my book addiction, the budget category I regularly blast out of the spreadsheet and never follow, the category I shake my head at when I tally up the year for tax time and realize the expense.

But. But!

Here I am, getting ready to ride for about five hours to Bismarck, and I'm looking for a book. As if standing in a bookstore, I started going through my shelves. The very wonderful difference here is that every book I picked up looked interesting and I wanted to read.

Of course. I'd already decided that at the real bookstore and bought it.

So, essentially, I can agonize in guilt over books not read, or I can relish in the thought that I will never go without something good to read close at hand, and that I live in my own personal, idealized, perfect "bookstore" where all the books are something I'm interested in.

I'm going to try and focus on the latter reaction.

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Labels: book stuff, the reading life

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Where have all the good men gone?

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I can't say I care much for the title of the book. It implies something fairly negative about both sexes: either there are fewer good men or that women are asking such a self-serving puffed-up question on a literal level.

But I had the book on my shelf and I'm making a concerted effort to read all of my books for crying out loud, and there you have it. I read A.J. Kiesling's book Where have all the good men gone?: Why so many Christian women are remaining single.

Kiesling bases her book on a survey she took, with 70 percent of the respondents being female, and 30 percent being male. She used true anecdotes and survey/letter responses to build each chapter around the topic, often including the strange outcome of singles ministries in today's Christian churches (which I agree with and, essentially, echo in this post).

Some of the book was good.

Like I said, she had some good things to say about the explosion of the singles ministry concept of the past few decades, in particular, and I wished she'd actually delved more deeply into that rather than the last half of the book which dealt with the survey responses of men and women. She discussed the concept of marriage and the bizarre state of extensive singleness in the modern world, attempting to put it in historical and Biblical context. In that, she also did a decent job though again, I'd wished she'd beefed up that section a bit more instead of the focus on the survey responses. She talked about the danger of the "buddies/friends" trap in which people stay in friendship of buddy groups for years and never make any committments. She offered good advice on "pulling a Ruth"¹ and sometimes taking the step to end a friendship that should be more but never would be if someone didn't just say something. She also touched briefly on the concept of men who wait to marry and then, when they do hit their upper 30's or 40's, they choose to marry much younger².

Because she provided the full excerpts of some of the responses, there were often a few in there that conflicted with each other. This is to be expected. Not all women feel the same about an issue, and the same can be said for men. Some of the responses were written by idiots, of either gender. Of that, I'm positive.

What bothered me was a seeming conflict in responses by those taking the survey. For example, the male respondents first made a case that Christian women were not really different from non-Christian women in how they dress and act and that that was a problem for them. A bit later, however, the response was that Christian women are too often overweight and unattractive and that men are surrounded by sexy, revealingly dressed women all day and how are Christian women supposed to expect men to be happy with them when they seem to buy their clothes at Walmart and not take pride in their appearance?

After reading some of the male responses to what they expected of women, I was mainly interested in meeting these guys and giving them a front snap kick to the groin.

It disturbs me that I found something more building and encouraging as far is working on the internal beauty and becoming a better person in a non-Christian feminist book that told me I don't have to fall into the traps of beauty, instead of in a "Christian" book. Kiesling's book made me feel, at the end, that I was desperate and needy and that I needed to start starving myself and doing all these things to be good enough for these fellows who, out of the same mouth, claimed Christian women expected too much from them spiritually and in maturity.

Front snap kick. Groin. Definitely. It's not as if Christian guys are all cherry, either. It's just that the women, in their survey responses, never even mentioned looks (or money, despite the common accusation of women being gold-diggers) in the top of the list whereas men did.

I can't say I can identify with most of the book, since she tends to focus on singles living in an urban area (never outright said, but clearly suggested by the way it is worded) with a very different life than I have had. This is often the case for me when reading such books: I really can't identify with the examples of all the past relationships and bad experiences and extensive singles group activities since I've not had that.

Again, after reading it the book, I didn't feel good or hopeful or anything near peaceful. I felt bad about myself and the way I looked and the life I'd led and the current state of affairs. Which is not what I am ever looking for in such books. I felt better and more hopeful and stronger after reading the non-Christian book, as I mentioned.

The better book on this topic which uses surveys and candid interviews is Shaunti Feldhahn's books, For Men Only and For Women Only. What she found echoes a lot of what Kiesling says, but it is put in a better, more methodological way that makes sense and isn't so insulting. Perhaps, because her respondents were married men and women, they didn't have the high level of selfishness that single people attain and nurture as they continue to be single. In that way, their responses weren't so "me me." I highly recommend those books for an "inside" look at what's going through the minds and hearts of men and women. Feldhahn's books are aimed at married couples but everyone, really, can benefit. Essentially, she reveals the "secret" fears and needs of each gender that the other may not realize or understand.

I would recommend reading both of Feldhahn's books (no matter if the titles suggest they are for one gender or the other) rather than reading this book.

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¹In response to guys who either left comments or emailed me after this post, I understood that the concept of "pulling a Ruth" i.e. not being passive and choosing to tell someone "I am interested" might be a good thing. In my case, when I did it, I can't say it was, or that anything arose from it other than exposing my heart and feeling embarassment. So there you go, for what it's worth. It might not always be a good idea.

²Some of the unsettling anecdotes involved a singles ministry in Florida where the leaders had divided the large group into an older and younger group. They had a problem with men from the older group "crashing" the younger group, essentially on the prowl for younger women instead of women who were their age. That I find creepy.

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Labels: book reviews, recommended reading

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No house-warming critique.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

The cover of the book looks pretty good.

I wish I'd quit falling for that.

That, and the critical reviews that lace the cover.

"Taut thriller!"

"Page turner!"

"Keeps you guessing until the end!!!!"

Um, no.

Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti got together and co-wrote a book and what's that they say about too many cooks? I've never read anything of Dekker's because too many Christian magazines have been proclaiming him to be like some kind of Christian-thriller genius making me doubt it, which is a lesson I obviously can't carry over 100 percent.

What is a "Christian thriller" anyway?

But the cover of the book looks good, the book in question being House.

The summation even sounds chilling: The only way out is in.

The start of the book is decent, I'll admit. But, as in the tradition of Stephen King who cooks up a great story but fumbles in the final closing delivery, this book bombs in the denouement. And there wasn't one character that I really cared about. I wanted someone to just kill them all off so I could call it done and read another book.

A violin string is taut. A bow is taut. This book is not taut. I'll admit to page turning, as in "I'm just going to start skimming so as not to waste any more of my time." And, sorry to say, I've been well-trained in ferreting out a clumsy Christian allegory and I figured out what was going on in this book at the halfway point.

I stand with Tolkien on this one, and add to it my opinion that forced Christian allegory is no treat. When I read Amazon.com reviews of the book with readers saying it is the "best horror story I've read", I can only recommend a reading of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian.

Of course, that's not a "christianized" story, which may explain why it rings true (despite being bout Dracula) and has more to glean morally and even spiritually than this forced effort by two well-known Christian authors. It also might not be considered a "page-turner" which really isn't, in my opinion, necessarily a positive attribute for a book. Kostova's book is a book of mulling and amazement and gradual revelation. House is...meant to sell books to a certain sector of readers. It likely does that well. However, I was disappointed. Peretti was an author I loved as a teen and young adult.

Perhaps I've become a jaded reader and am not willing to put up with it anymore, but I don't think that the case. Instead, I think of this as another example of a sub-par Christian product beget from a mind that thinks Christians can only write in direct allegory or with the subtlety of a Mack truck driving over you.

Essentially, the book is about sin.

Read it if you want. I didn't care for it.

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Labels: book reviews, christian books

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The Beauty Myth.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I recently finished reading Naomi Wolf's book The Beauty Myth: How Images Of Beauty Are Used Against Women. I recommend it to women, and also to men.

Though I can't say I buy her theory that everything she talks about is conspired for political reasons, and I can't say that I hold to her interpretation of Christianity in some regards...I can say this was an important book for me to read. Reading some of it was extremely angering because I can identify with the frustration and double standard detailed inside and I know that I can't do much about it but find a way to exist within it all. I was glad Wolf gave voice to the wordless frustration and self-hate that exists inside.

I don't really want to do a blow-by-blow critique of this now decade-old book. You can do a quick Google search and find plenty of people who are better able to extract and critique the facts, figures, an validity of Wolf's ideas. I wish there was a version of the book for younger girls who are especially brutalized by the media into what it takes for them to be considered beautiful, worth something, and necessary.

What I took away from the book, mainly, was a recognition of the extreme frustration and destructive way of thinking about who I was and am and should be. And -- most importantly -- that when I let outside forces (media, peers, etc.) tell me whether or not I am beautiful, I am perpetually at the mercy of changing whims and never able to function with confidence.

My entire life has been one of a small voice in the back of my head -- even in moments of other personal triumph or success -- telling me "you're fat, you're ugly, you're not worth anything, who are you kidding." What a horrible thing to think, despite all the education and skills and experience I have, to fixate on something so meaningless as extra pounds or pimples! It is absolutely ridiculous! I am fairly certain that many other women out there identify with this existence. Nothing distresses me more than when my female friends, who are smart and talented and capable and a real joy, start equating their physical appearance with what theya re worth. I want to holler "you are so much more than the size of your hips!" Yet I do the same to myself. The comparative pressure of perfection is an unbearable weight.

This world is brutal to women because of the value placed on external beauty which is, inevitably, fleeting. Wolf points out that women are valued for their beauty while men for their experience and skill. If our worth comes from our external beauty, we become worthless as we age while experience and skill (which often show up as lines on the face) increase with age. I look at women like Helen Mirren and find her gorgeous and hope she never messes with her face and hair, but I know, just from listening in on men's conversations over the years, that she would receive a derogatory comment as they flipped through a magazine in search of a 20-something model who was "hot."

Upon finishing the book, I knew some of the extreme ideas I couldn't agree to, such as extreme self-love and the entire concepts of "reward yourself and spend time on you" and all those other selfish thoughts that I do battle to remove from my head. However, I also realized I don't have to, in order to combat selfishness, hate myself.

There have been moments where I've foolishly commented aloud to a friend that I thought a particular person was good to look at, even though they might have been not traditionally "good looking." I often speak in terms of drawing, thinking back to my days in college when I drew from nude models and got to see the human body in all its variations. My favorite model was not the tight-bodied young woman named Alex, but an older women named Delores with sags and wrinkles everywhere. She was the model who all the stupid younger college guys joked about after class. But I found her wonderful to draw, which was the point of the class. After a while, I found her beautiful by using this different "definition." She helped me create beauty, and I found her beautiful.

But that's hard to describe to people who get a strange look on their face when you even try to tell them how it is to draw from a nude model and why it is important. Even more so in a bizarre world where a woman commenting on the beauty of another women makes people think of lesbianism rather than a mere appreciation of beauty. And even more so when the a definition of beauty slips in that isn't the one being pushed on us today. And so, when I find myself drawn to an unusual face, I've learned to not make a comment about it since the response is usually something like "you've got to be kidding me!"

I know, then, that beauty is definied differently in each person, yet I still, like Wolf points out in her book as she talks about "beauty" magazines and models and celebrities and the way women are silenced ever-so-subtly by making a comment about their looks -- I still fall into the trap.

I compare myself, and I come up short. I have a never-ending list of things I need to "fix" or improve, as if my own healthy, functioning body weren't beautiful on its own, as if it were broken and needed fixing.

I want to be beautiful. We all do. I'm starting to see, however, that there is no one definition of beauty, despite what women have been trained to think by what they see in the images and expectations around them. There is no one definition of beauty. This is important.

There are so many things I'd like to say about beauty and about this book and what it is causing me to rethink, but mainly, I've caught myself (since finishing the book) repeating a phrase in my mind in the moments I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror or see a bad photograph and hear the disembodied voices of all the magazines and movies and TV shows with the thin women with perfect skin and the comments men make that seem harmless but cut: You don't get to decide if I'm beautiful.

I don't have the "perfect" body as defined by today. I don't have the skin, the facial feature arrangement, the lack of lines, the flawless hair... I'm just a normal, healthy woman. And, I've spent a lot of time on the inside, not just the spackle on the outside.

I think that's beautiful.

I am created in the image of God. I am beautiful because of that.

I just need to remember this when the feeling of ugliness sweeps over me like a wave the next time I'm standing in a checkout line and see a magazine with the Perfect Woman on the cover.

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Labels: recommended reading

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World Magazine has a new look.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I have to say I'm very impressed with the new World Magazine and online webzine format.

Because of postal rate increases, the magazine (after getting feedback from subscribers) decided to go to a bi-monthly format. Instead of a magazine each week (which rarely happened because the postal service lagged and we'd often get two magazines on the same day), we now get two a month, twice as thick.

I'm very impressed by the first issue of this new format: thick, jam-packed with great articles and material. And the new web site that they've got up and running... excellent.

I'd encourage you to consider World Magazine. They are sometimes described as the "Christian Newsweek" (I've used that description myself) but I rather hate to see the word "Christian" used as an adjective for material items. The content is from a Christian's perspective, but it is, by no means, predictably conservative. In fact, I always get a kick out of reading the letters to the editor from Christians who were offended by something and want their subscription canceled.

Related Links:

The most fickle bunch of all. World on the Web World Magazine World Magazine Blog

Labels: magazines

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Books not worth the paper.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

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A friend emailed me about a book being used in a school that was questionable in nature. Normally, I'm very much against pulling books out of schools and classrooms, particularly if those people who are calling for it are parents who haven't read the book but have read a mailer from some parachurch organization decrying the book.

Nothing irks me more than people who insist a book is no good without having read it at all, going instead on the word or interpretation of someone else. To say they don't have time to read what their child is reading is shameful, and essentially says to the teacher that the person or organization calling for the ban knows what's best for the child, rather than his or her own parents. I love that, in my friend's case, the parents read the book instead of just marching to school in anger without knowledge of what they were talking about.

The particular book in question in my friend's case is written by an author who panders to children and teens with supernatural/horror stories that aren't well written and aren't stories remotely capable of gleaning meaning for life from them. They are, for no better word, pulp. Lowest-common-denominator books. The kinds of books I see touted by teachers in articles about kids reading simply for the fact that the trashiness of the books makes kids want to read and the teachers have been fooled into thinking that reading anything at all is the main thing.

"The kids just love these books! They can't put them down! I can hardly keep up with the demand in the library!" is usually how such a quote might appear in an article.

I disagree.

Eating anything at all doesn't provide the same function as eating well. Eat crap, feel like crap. Read crap, think like crap. I would rather have kids stumble along and read quality than be able to point out the quantity of chapter books they are whizzing right through.

Banning books
The photo in this post is one I took back in my days as newspaper reporter/photographer. I did an article (during the hyped banned-books month) about banned books. Every book in the pile is from my own library, and all are books that have caused problems with parents. I love to read, and I love to read the books my nephew is reading so we can talk about them -- even books like Harry Potter or others that give some parents cause for alarm. Stories that have elements that don't jive with my worldview are not necessarily worthless because of that mere conflict. The best stories ring true because we humans all have, essentially, the same story: a desire for value and love and heroism and truth and nobility and hope and excitement. It may come out in different forms, but the story is the same. We learn about our life through story.

I don't like banning books that have artistic or intellectual merit. The same protection and esteem is not a given for every book; just because it was published doesn't mean it has merit. Just because a book found a publisher doesn't mean it's sacred. Some books, frankly, are crap.

I've been on the receiving end of more than a few comments about my art and writing by people who think they've got a right to tell me how they think I've created something awful and harmful, so I'm not easily led into banning books for reasons like "there was the suggestion of such and such behavior" or "five swear words!"

However, I don't like teachers assigning poorly written tripe for kids to read simply because we're at a place now where we think kids won't (or can't) read a book that is challenging. There are good books and stories for every reading level. Find them.

Because of this idea, I actually had no problem with the situation my friend described. The book being used had no business being assigned to students to read not only because the content (dealing with zombie-like beings needing to kill more people for fresh blood or some such nonsense) was questionable for the age level, but because there is -- and I can guarantee it because I have read and know the author's writing style -- absolutely no educational merit to the story other than to get kids to open a book and lay claim to the fact that, indeed, they did read an entire book.

Children and fiction
I am reminded of the line from You've Got Mail, where Meg Ryan's character (Kathleen Kelly) is talking about the books we read as children:

When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.

This is very true!

The books I read as a child somehow hover and shape the way I think about my childhood and the topics covered in the books. The visual images I conjured up while reading those books still haunts my synapses today, whereas I find the books I read now I forget in about a year or so. When I go back and read those books from my youth, the effect is not the same, not as magical. It is so incredibly important that the books kids read as children have value in their story and content and imaginativeness -- all of it! That a teacher would have such a worthless book be assigned to a class of kids is an outrage beyond the "I'm going to ban a book because there are swear words in it!" It is a level close to killing that unique identity kids get from excellent books and carry with them as a sort of intellectual and imagination savings account; it robs them of a certain kind of innocence.

The effect a book has on me as an adult is not the same it will have on a class of kids, so for teachers to take cues on what to assign or use in the classroom based on adult recommendations that say the book is harmless or the kids seem to "eat it up!" is beyond shameful.

It's robbery.

Reader Input: What books shaped you as a child? The books that stick in my mind strongly for the visuals and the stories that were used in the classroom include Where the Red Fern Grows, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Charolette's Web, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, the Ralph and the Motorcycle series, The Wind in the Willows, The Giver...and so on. How about you?

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Labels: book stuff, childrens books, the reading life

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Being intellectual.

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Conflicted Charisma.

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Socrates cafe.

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Jesus for President.

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Away with the book guilt.

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Where have all the good men gone?

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No house-warming critique.

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The Beauty Myth.

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World Magazine has a new look.

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Books not worth the paper.

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