Good literature

Goodness gracious, at any given point in time we have a pile of these books in our home.

Anna loves them.  Thus she likes to photograph them.

I do not.

There's nothing inherently WRONG with them, but...well...it's just filler.  No great plots, or characters, or new vocabulary words, or even silly laughs.  No redeeming qualities at all, except that they are entertainment, I suppose.  "Light reading" for a six year old.  (Picture me shaking my head.)

Part of my issue is that Anna's reading level is far beyond these books.  But she adores them.  And any time Kevin takes her along to pick up our latest bounty at the library, she somehow knows where to find them and comes home with several in tow.

And proceeds to read every last one of them, in rapid succession, when she walks through the door.

No joke.  She plants herself either on the floor or on the couch, and doesn't get up until all of them are done.

I guess you can tell that I'm not one of those moms that will be rejoicing over my fourteen year old reading Cosmo, saying "Well at least she's reading!"  Nope, not so much.

Content matters.  It matters in what we read, what we watch, and in our hearts.  Funny how those things are all linked together.

The truth is that I love children's fiction.  Love.it.  Some of my fondest memories of childhood include good books that I read.  I love silly kid books with lots of pictures and I love the classics like Treasure Island or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  I love more recent classics like Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and stuff by Scott O'Dell or Roald Dahl or Elizabeth George Spear. 

But I'm not as in love with fluffy-ish books like these.

However, because Anna reads tons of good books otherwise and there's NOT anything particularly wrong with the fairy princesses (or whatever they are), we let her check them out.  She has a good time and because she blows through them so quickly, she doesn't actually spend that much time reading them.  And, I have to admit that I had quite a penchant for The Babysitters Club books as a kid, and I don't really think one can argue that those are in any way quality literature.  Even though I loved 'em, and may or may not have a huge collection sitting out in my garage right now.  (I liked Dawn and Kristy the best.  How about you?  And don't try to pretend you didn't read them, because I know that you did.  So stop it.)

Our family has slowly-but-surely been going through L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and we only have one chapter to go.  Such a fun story.  Not sure what we'll do next, but you can bet it will NOT be about any sort of Valentine fairy! 

(Though I do need to mention that the upside is, when Anna reads these, she's not asking me why Abraham lied about Sarah, saying she was his sister.  That only happens when, um, she's reading the Bible.  Which contains various things that are just not kid-tested or mother-approved!)