The GIVER and other books

[Betty Dawn Hamilton <bhamilt@TENET.EDU>]

On Thu, 27 Oct 1994, Tim Lance wrote:


> The only kids reading it are those who can handle it.

Tim,

That statement evokes a comment.  Because we had such an age mixture in
our Middle School (grades 6-8), parents sometimes questioned having
"teenage" books available to 6th graders.  My reply was/is that avid
readers can probably handle more than the non-readers can, and the
non-readers won't read those books.

One thing that the counselors and I observed when we had second thoughts
about some of the sex-ed books in a library for 6th through 8th was that
if the books had no pictures, only those who could understand and
*really* wanted to know checked them out.  We felt that if they were
interested enough to *read* then they probably were ready to handle the
material.  Consequently, when I shopped for sex-ed books for that level, I
looked for good *information* and few or no pictures.  That way, the
books were checked out for reading of information instead of just for the
pictures.  (I live in a *very* conservative community.)

Betty
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