My Children’s Librarian back in Nyack when I was a girl said that I read so much, I could afford some dumb books. My Mom mostly agreed, but rationed out the Judy Blume books, those she said were like candy or worse, as I was only reading them to be able to discuss them with girls at school who were reading them, they were easy to give up. I read all of the Danny Dunn books until I could recite the paragraph in the first chapter about how Danny’s father had died when he was a small boy, and his mother kept house for Professor Bullfinch, who was like a father to him…Cherry Ames and Nancy Drew however seemed all the same by the third book in.
So my older boy reading lots of series books is OK with me, sort of, though I’d like him to branch out voluntarily – I do assign history reading to go with the Story of the World though, and I try my best to pick "living books." He groans and moans for nearly an hour, every day that it takes him to finish; then once he does finish the book, he peppers his conversation with facts and stories he’s learned from it with satisfactory smugness. So, I might start him branching out un-voluntarily. I tried a few months ago to read him the first chapter from some books that were said to be similar to the Harry Potter books – most of the fiction I read as a girl had female main characters, a bit of a harder sell? So I was working off a list. Anyway, the books just sat on the library bookshelf until it was time to take them back after I introduced them.
Last night (hip hip hip huzzah!) B brought me a Newberry Honor Book I’d checked out for ME to read, asked me to read aloud the first chapter, decided it was intriguing and walked off with it. At Breakfast he told me what was going on in the story, and what mysterious threads he was keeping track of.
I can live with dueling bookmarks.