And sometimes the child's mind and the mothers mind collide?
That was the case lately with my son and I over a review book from Raincoast Books. It's called "Revenge of the Green Banana".
He did read it through, though frequently said "MOM! This book is Not funny, the people are really mean and the boy is spending all his money!!!" I have to admit, that my lad's strong sense of justice prevented him from finding anything to enjoy in this book.
Whereas my "mother" instinct said "Good book, the lad in the book learns an important lesson, and realizes that sometimes people in authority have reasons for the things they do, good teaching moment."
So it's hard for me to tell you what our end result of reviewing this book is, because it's so very mixed. :)
I would say that it depends ALOT on your children. Do they have a strong sense of justice and fair play? If so... so NOT the book to encourage your child to read. They will simply be annoyed and angry at how things turned out.
BUT if they can see beyond the underlying story and see how a group of children banded together, and how the protagonist figured out that he should have done things differently, and how it was funny how he "saved the day" in the end... then... it will be a good book for them to read. :)
You know your children best... perhaps better than I know mine in retrospect. I should have heeded his comments better BUT then I would have missed out on a great discussion with him about how people can view the same book quite differently, about how age differences can influence how one sees a book, as well as how God made us to be as people influences what we see/hear/view in a book. It's good to have those discussions and I hope is the start of many other discussions about books where we will disagree about different aspects of them.
Is good is it not?
The Revenge of the Green Banana
Written by Jim Murphy
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5.5 x 8.25 · 224 pages
Ages 10-12 years