Adam@Home by Rob Harrell for April 24, 2020

Foiled again!

Isn’t that how you become whacky?!

I’ve always been permissive with books.

If the kid is willing and capable, the kid is old enough. Some themes might need debriefing afterwards, is all.

It would have been one thing to stop her before she even started to read the book, but she’s obviously well into it. Stopping it now isn’t likely to do much good, even assuming that getting her not to read it at all would have been a good idea.

I had a kid in my scout troup who was always antagonistic to kids he didn’t know. Loved to fight only strangers, loved to lose, didn’t want to win. Never could talk him out of it. While reading The Godfather Don vito explains to Michael why Luca Brassa was a perfect soldier. I had my explanation.

If Katy is reading “The Godfather” I’d suggest more advanced books than “Green Eggs and Ham”. I’d recommend “The Hobbit”, “Black Beauty” “Little Women” etc. Most of those I first read when I was around 5 or 6 years old.

My parents had no idea what I was reading when I was a kid!

I read “To Kill A Mockingbird” when I was eight. I understood it and my parents were pleased that I could grasp its story. That was me.

If your kids are able to understand material, let ‘em go. It’s up to the “responsible adults” to decide what their kids may read. IMO

If she read past the wedding, she already knows quite a bit more about Sonny and men than she ought to before “the talk”.

How old is Katy, anyway? I wouldn’t stop her reading it regardless, but I’m trying to figure out exactly how impressed to be by her vocabulary and reading comprehension skills.

I have found books to be instructive in both what to do and what not to do. They are also a good warning of what other people might do or not do. Sort of a mental inoculation to the deeds of mankind.

I never liked Dr. Seuss as a kid, but as an adult, I like quite a few of them.

When I was 9 or so, I found a book at a neighbor’s yard sale that was an autobiography of a woman in England who progressively lost her vision, got a guide dog, and then had cataract surgery to restore her sight. The neighbor made me get my mother’s approval before she would sell it to me. I think it was because she was fairly open about having been “the other woman” when she first met her husband. (Side note: I happened to look her up online a few years ago and if I recall correctly, she divorced him after learning he had found another “other woman”.)

Poor little Katy’s plans are foiled and she just tragically says, “Aw, man!”

But what about Humpty?