Carpe Datum

Reading is *so* good for kids. It amazes me how many adults don't read.

A good friend of mine since college had a rabbi as a father, and her parents let her read anything as a kid, they didn't care if she was reading trashy things like Cosmo or romance novels, as long as she was reading they'd feed that desire.

Man, I haven't read any Moorcock since I was a teenager. I've got the 6 book Elric series as well as the 4 book Runestaff series, I loved them as a kid. I especially liked the very end of the Elric series, it cracked me up for weeks.

Stuff I read a ton of as a kid... Piers Anthony. Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan, Venus, Mars, Pellucidar, and Caspak series.

Aspirin's Myth series, as well as his Thieve's World shared-author short stories.

Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld, World of Tiers, and others.

Everything by Alan Dean Foster.

Everything by Heinlein, and Niven, and Harry Harrison.

Anne McCaffrey's Pern series.

Robert Silverberg's Majipoor series.

I'm sure I already mentioned Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain and CS Lewis' Narnia, both of which are young adult and prime fodder for anyone who likes Harry Potter.

I've already given the kids "Narnia", and Sarah devoured it. I think the boys won't read it because they figure if Sarah likes it, it must be a girl story. They were also probably a little turned off by the absolutely horrible BBC adaptation video that Sarah checked out from the library and watched over and over. I will bring it up, though.

I read the first 7-8 Xanth books as a kid, and those were great. Can't find 'em, though, so they must have gotten lost, too. I've got some "Thieves' World" books, and there are some good short stories in there. I didn't like them as a whole, though.

I've never read Burroughs or Farmer. A friend of mine described Farmer's books as brilliant ideas that never go anywhere (very boring), so I kinda stayed away because I respected his opinions. Only thing I read by Foster was "Splinter of the Mind's Eye", which was great ("Into the Out Of" I read later and didn't like so much).

I think Niven and Harrison are a little advanced for them right now. I really liked Niven/Barnes' "Dream Park" and the classic "Footfall". There are a few others by Niven that are ok, but they aren't mature enough to appreciate the SF ideas. I was pretty tepid about the whole "Stainless Steel Rat" series. Read a few and thought they were so-so.

The Pern series was one of the very few books I read as a kid that I didn't own. I checked these out from the library, and I thought they were just fine. I read a few of Silverbergs Majipoor books in college, and they were good but again seem over the head of a typical teenager. I've never heard of Lloyd Alexander. I'll look him up.

I have a lot more reviews to do, I guess.

Don't forget L'Engel's "Wrinkle in Time". I think there are other books now making that a series, but I am not positive (and I haven't read them). I read that in 4th grade.

Kurtz's stuff did nothing for me. All I got out of it was senseless cruelty for dynastic ambition. Kinda like invading Iraq.

I've read the Count Brass series (over 30 years ago), and it's OK; I am not much of a Moorcock fan, so directing your kids toward it is probably OK.

Heck, if you want to see if you can provoke some thought, give 'em the Epic of Gilgamesh. Short, and pretty simple stuff now, but when it sinks in that the story is some four thousand years old....

Oh yeah, we've blown through most of the Newberry/Caldecott books already. Wrinkle in Time is on that list, though I can't remember specifically which ones read it and when.

I have Earthsea, and I didn't recommend it to the kids. I think an appreciation of that series requires a more mature reader. I read it as a kid and didn't really like it. I'm sure I would like it more today.

As I said above, the only reason I didn't pick out McCaffrey is that I don't own it. I will probably look for that omnibus at a used bookstore. The real trick is whether I think enough of the Belgariad to pick it up for the kids. Don't know yet.

I read some Bester recently and didn't think too much of it, honestly. I definitely didn't think it was something the kids would like. Heinlein is also beyond their appreciation right now, in my opinion. I mean, I loved some of his short stories, but I wasn't impressed by "Stranger" or his much worse "Friday" or "Cat Who Walks Through Walls", etc. He wrote an awful lot of crap mixed in with the good stuff.

McCaffrey's Dragonrider stuff evolved substantially over time. The first story was "hard" enough to appear in Analog during John Campbell's editorship. The later stuff gets ... squishier. IMO her "Ship Who Sang" stories are better.

Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity" and the 15-years-later "Star Light" are quite good, though kids would probably miss the central theme of the latter (then again, they might not; if they do get it, it's an important lesson). Both of them have been in and out of print, and I don't know which state they're in now.

Depending on what you want the kids to learn, You could direct them to non-fiction by Desmond Morris, "The Naked Ape". Caused quite a stir in its time. I read it in 9th grade and it had a profound impact on my thinking. I leave it for you to opine whether that is a good or bad statement. I know my English teacher at the time didn't like it; she trashed the first essay I handed in after processing the things I read there, largely because she didn't believe I had written it.

James H Schmitz (a pseudonym for a woman whose real name I don't know) wrote some decent stuff also "hard" enough to appear in old Analog. A lot of it were the Telzey stories (which to my mind are a real mixed bag, but on average not all that good), but not all of it. Probably my favorite story of hers came out in book form under the title "The Demon Breed" (a real publisher's barf-maker of a title; it was serialized as "The Tuvela"). It's set in the same universe as the Telzey stories but uses only non-continuing characters, so it's safely stand-alone.

Christopher Anvil's "Pandora's Planet" and one of its follow-ups (I can't recall the title) were pretty good, too. I gather there's a slew of stories in that cycle, and I've only read two of them.

Zelazny is another author I didn't see mentioned. "Lord of Light" is good, and I think "Doorways in the Sand" is terrific. "Jack of Shadows" was very disappointing. The first Amber series was interesting but I wouldn't call it great; I have only read the first book of the second Amber set. I suppose a lot of what you think of those stories depends on what you think of Zelazny's frame-within-a-frame-within-a-frame-... technique; it works for me, but your mileage may vary.

I'm familiar with Clement's book, but I'll have to refresh my memory on that. Zelazny didn't make the cut for me. I really liked the Amber concept, but the plots weren't that great. I appreciated what Zelazny was trying to do with "Lord of Light", but I didn't "get" it. "Doorways" was a little better but still probably too much for an average teenager to handle (I imagine you weren't an average teenager, Feff). :)

Part of the whole point is to raise him from an average teenager into an above-average teenager. :)

For Heinlein, I'd recommend anyone read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", his best work in my opinion. Otherwise, start 'em on his juveniles, like Starman Jones, The Star Beast, Time for the Stars, Citizen of the Galaxy, "Have Space Suit, Will Travel", The Rolling Stones, Red Planet, Farmer in the Sky...

I'd disagree that he's a mysoginist, his female characters were pretty strong for the most part.

They did a movie in 1985 of "The Black Cauldron", part of Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series.

While I enjoyed Feist's Riftwar saga, it was eye-opening to read MAR Barker's "Man of Gold" and "Flamesong", which is where Feist gets his background. Apparently Feist was a player in Barker's campaign.

Yay for Justin!

9th grade English? I remember 9th grade English. It was the beginning of a slide in my performance in English classes. Of course, this is A) in an Oklahoma public school district and; B) in an honors English class; that's when we started having to write structured essays. I don't know why, but it took me a long time to really "get it" I guess (funny, considering my focus now). But I hope he does well; it should be a great confidence booster.

MAR Barker ... Empire of the Petal Throne. Played that for a while, great stuff for an RPG universe. "Man of Gold" was readable but didn't do a lot for me. He drew very heavily on Meso-American culture for that.

I wouldn't call Heinlein a misogynist, but he is a chauvinist (in a number of different dimensions) down to the core of his being.

Try feeding the kids some of Asimov's nonfiction. The Noble Gases, a few others I recall swallowing in my middle school days; Asimov was a chemist before he diversified. Of course, I must have gone through just about everything in the 500 section of the Bremerhaven base library.