Those of you who are following along might remember me ranting about how much I disliked, then grew fond of Ms. Junie B. Jones because she was making J. and I laugh at bedtime and sometimes randomly throughout the day, which is a great thing, of course, but after reading a bunch of Junie B.'s I am pretty tired of the language. How many stupid's, shut up's and your just dumb do we have to plow through? Many of those particular words are not acceptable language in our peaceful, hippie house so often I would pass over every third insert dumb, stupid, shut up... in reading chapters to J. but then I keep thinking when she is able (soon) to read these to herself she will read those on her own and think me a liar or be disagreeable that the author had to choose these words over and over even though J. is taught to expand her vocabulary. Sorry Barbara Park...yet the books are so funny. I wish we could go back and rewrite them with out those words because those are not the words that make the stories drop down funny. I am happy to see many other books out there for this age group though that don't have any stupid's, shut-up's or dumb. For example, we and many of my 2nd and 3rd grade library patrons love the Ivy and Bean series by Annie Barrow( see previous posts). I hope to find more kid lit out there like this for this beginning chapter book, mostly girl group. I think maybe it is a generational thing, Ms. Park?
1 comment:
One of the moms at the school I intern at tried to give a whole set of them to a second grade teacher and the teacher said "no, I can't have these in my classroom because of the language," and the mom said "That's why I'm trying to get rid of them! I've asked four teachers now and all of them won't take them for the same reason!"
Too bad to have such delightful books made unfriendly by some poor language choices on the part of the author.
Post a Comment