Dear Friends, All of you who are parents allow me to tell you a secret! My Dad, a newspaperman, did not forbid me to read any book wherein I could understand the words. He had so many books that my Mother threatened to leave if one more book came into the house...his deft move ?... buy another house! The first thing through the door, carried by yrs truly : a box of books! Back to the secret : Dad had both fiction and non-fiction and he lived by NEWS the ultimate non-fiction, day by day and on deadline but he did not force it on me. He started me with Sherlock Holmes so I learned a lot about Victorian London and logic. I progressed to short stories, Hugo, deMaupassant et.al. learning all the way. He explained that reading a Russian novel wasn't so hard, that it was like going to a party where everyone was a stranger to you.... keep going and gradually the important names began to stick as they became alive to you. Good writers do that, Dad said. I read Les Miserables and Madame Bovary and all the greats....the finer points of the stories escaped me (I was about 10 when I started) but they carried me along....all whacking great reads! The secret is to find interesting ficton and make it available. Fiction that has something new in it. I was in my 60s when I "discovered" Dick Francis and learned a great deal about horses and racing .... later I could impress the hell out of my niece who is a superb competition-class equestrian.
Another sidelight : when I got to 8th grade the sisters talked to us about the Proscribed List and named some of the books....I'd read them! I confessed to Sister. My Dad was summoned to school to meet with Sister Superior!!! OMYGAWD ! She told my father she was upset with me because I lied about the books I had read and named a few I had confessed to. "But Sister, she has read them."Dad told her! -Sister. He smoothed it all out of course, he was a tall blue-eyed Irishman who could talk a dog off a meat wagon and charm the socks off any woman even a stern Sister Superior!
I also got a taste for classics from those silly Classic Comics. If you REALLY really really want your kids to read, HIDE a few books and let them overhear a remark or two about how they're too young to be allowed to read the book. I found "Gone With The Wind" in Dad's sock drawer while putting away the laundry! Learned a bit about the Civil War (War Between The States).
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