My Mom was right...

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away (the one where I didn't have kids quite yet), I took a Children's Lit class to finish up my elementary school special education license.  I was about 8 months pregnant with The Girl and I figured that Children's Lit would be an "easy and fun" course to take and would help me identify some great books to read with my child as she grew older.

Ha! The course was horrendous....Every. Single. Book. the professor assigned was dystopian, sad, about abuse, about death, about loss...It. Was. Awful.  Even the picture books were horrible--good books, but all sad and disturbing (Faithful Elephants, anyone?) I made the mistake of saying to the professor something like "These books are super disturbing...is there nothing better being written for children?"  Her response?  "THESE ARE MY FAVORITE BOOKS!  CHILDREN NEED TO READ ABOUT SAD THINGS SO THEY UNDERSTAND HOW CRUEL THE WORLD REALLY IS.  CLEARLY YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT LITERATURE!!!".

Um.  Ok then.  It ended up being my only B in grad school (grrrr)...because every book review ended with me saying I'd never use the book in the classroom (which is doubly true, as I planned to, and do, teach high school) but I took it, finished it and moved on.

One of the books we read was The Giver.  I hated that book.  I won't tell you all the reasons, because if you haven't read it, it would spoil the story.  If you've read it and want to hear my reasons let me know.  So I've spent almost 14 years hating that darn book.  In the meantime, Lois Lowry wrote 3 "sequels".  Apparently my mom read all four recently and told me I should read them.  I retold my tale of woe and reluctantly agreed to read them, because she said the sequels were so good. And...she was right.  (She always is, by the way).  I will tell you that what I found disturbing when I read The Giver the first time still was disturbing and again wondered why a professor would "yell" at an obviously pregnant woman for being disturbed by certain scenes...but The Giver was not as bad as I remembered and the "sequels" are pretty good.

So there, Mom...you were right (again)....