Comments on: >"Oh yes, the new Lowry. Haven’t quite got to it yet, but the woman’s a genius."

By: J. L. Bell

J. L. Bell — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:05:00 +0000

>A school librarian on Child_Lit told a story about middle-grade boys checking out the later Harry Potter books and then sitting around bragging to each other about how big their volumes were—without actually reading them.

Because for some boys, size matters.

By: Mother (Re)produces.

Mother (Re)produces. — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:01:00 +0000

>When I was a child (late seventies early eighties) It was Lord of the Rings and the Narnia series. Everyone was reading them, everyone had read them, and I carried them around and around and around.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:29:00 +0000

>My kids were those ostentatious non-readers of Harry Potter. But the middle one (male!) HAS read Twilight. Oh the snerking behind my closed door.

estri

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:28:00 +0000

>My 3rd grade nephew, who has reading trouble, is carrying around HUGO CABRET–we think it’s because it’s big and thick and it makes him feel he’s reading as well as the other kids. He’s embarrassed by FROG AND TOAD, for example.

By: laura

laura — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:51:00 +0000

>My classmates and I were such competitive readers as kids (we’d call each other on the phone at night to say, “I’m on chapter 5–what chapter are you on”–that I’m sure we must have done some of this, although I don’t remember any specific examples.

By: Monica Edinger

Monica Edinger — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:48:00 +0000

>I didn’t experience that with 4th graders, but I’d guess (hope) that some slightly older kids did just that as I did with the Beatles in 1964 purely because the other 6th grade girls were being so “stupid” about them.

By: Roger Sutton

Roger Sutton — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:03:00 +0000

>Did you also get kids ostentatiously not reading Harry Potter? Kind of like the way I rolled my eyes at my niece last weekend when she said she was reading Twilight.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:22:00 +0000

>I’m with Monica on Harry Potter. Lots of kids bought them and lugged them around and simply weren’t that interested or were comfortable reading one through three but found the rest too dense or lengthy.

By: Rachael

Rachael — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:04:00 +0000

>I have a friend who claims that he used to read “girl books” (Anastasia Krupnik, etc.) in order to chat up the ladies on the playground.

By: Monica Edinger

Monica Edinger — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:50:00 +0000

>Definitely Harry Potter after the first summer they did the big release thing and it suddenly became THE book for everyone. I so remember several girls who normally would have been reading Blume or Naylor’s Alice books, lugging around #4. Eventually they sat in the cubbies unfinished.