High School Students Reading

[jdudley118]

As a teacher and school starting in less than a month, I was wondering what your thoughts on this question are. Let me preface this by saying that in America, there a lot of channels books have to go through to be approved for a class. Principal, School Board, and the PTA(Parent-Teacher Association) all have to approve it. After that, the parents have to give their permission as well. With the subject matter that is dealt with in the book, would you give your permission for your High School aged child, 15-17 years old, to read this book if were part of a class? Reasons, why or why not, go!

[drakkar]

Just ask Intrige!
I know that the book has been a topic in a Stockholm high scool.

[jdudley118]

Just ask Intrige!
I know that the book has been a topic in a Stockholm high scool.

Yeah, I can imagine, but believe it or not the rest of the world is more liberal to what their students learn than the US. Ask any CLEAR THINKING American. It's ridiculous!

[intrige]

I was 16 when I read the book. Of course some of the topics, with Håkan, was rather scary. But it's ment to be scary and also opened some.. views for me that I did not have before. As well as to the Swedish languige, in a way. My mom for example, knew I read the book, and we switched books at one point, she read LTROI like I begged her to, and I read one of her books that I ended up finding boring.. After 3/4 of the book.

It was allready in my scool library (That school had ages from 16-18, maybe 19, maybe 20) And nobody had a problem with that. The movie was also in the book shelf for rent. I made the librarian ordeer another LTROI book "In case someone wanted to rent it and the only one was allready rented" I said. But also to order waperwalls, handling the undead and Harbour. Because I wanted to read them They are still there and I made my mark at the school in that tiny lilbrary.

Cultures are different of course, some might not handle pedofilia.. Not that I blame them. But it is important to bring out the other values of LTROI in order for it to be aproved. When I think about this I think about why I showed the movie to my at the time 11-yearold niece. It's because even with the supernatural, hint of pedofilia and blood and killing at the end. It shows a whole lot of empathy for the main characters, about lonelyness and bullying and about feeling alone and finding hope, in someone else. I think that I was LTROI is all about, finding someone. And it feels extra special when the charaters finding each other have been alone for a while.. I wanted my niece to see that so that if she saw someone always being alone, sitting alone somehwre maybe at her new school. She would feel sorry for them, think of Oskar or Eli. And maybe walk over and talk to them.

Even though she only saw the movie, and she was only 111, it's mainly the same thing with big teens reading the book. Why would you want them to? Besides you loving it of course. What do they learn from it? There are many immuture teens that parhaps have not seen the quiet ones sitting alone before, but will after reading LTROI. If you tell the parents something like this, it might get aproven! I find it a bit weird though that you would need an accseption for a book when the "kids" are old enough to deside for themselves and are muture enough to be mentally challenged that harshly..
Cause even though some might find me muture for my age, I was not Ready for Håkan, and LTROI in it's whole. But when thinking about it later, I somehow learned some lessons from it. And others may too.

Btw, there are younger less achtive members here too, some are 12 O.o some are 13 and 14 and 15 and 16. I can even say spesific usernames to prove all of those ages.. But I won't. They can put themsleves out there if they want You know who you are!!

[gattoparde59]

I did let my High School age daughter read Let the Right One In. She said it wasn't any worse than other things she was reading. She has since read Handling the Undead and Little Star. One of the few people I know personally who actually read these books. My son never read this, although he read Deliverance and Fight Club in his Catholic High School class.

[sauvin]

A high school aged child 15-17 reading LTROI? By that age, they're not so "young and impressionable" anymore. A novel like LTROI could challenge a child of such age intellectually, and provoke new trains of thought and avenues of exploration into what by now should probably have long since been very familiar social and moral terrains. If the novel could honestly be said to "harm" them in any way, I'd submit the alleged harm would be by catalysis, irritating or exacerbating a pre-existing condition.

In my little remote cornfield, it wouldn't be too terribly surprising to see books like the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or the Adventures of Tom Sawyer being banned right alongside the apparently troubled Harry Potter series, Stephanie Meyer's misguided twilit lot, the Bridge to Terabithia and the Chronicles of Narnia. Folks living between the same corn stalks as myself can be implacably (and mindlessly) conservative, and anything that has just a little too much suggestion of alternative religious perspectives, a little too much violence and a little too much skin or personal contact or a few too many "bad words" can trip their banhammers alerts.

America is a big country, and different parts of it can be amazingly different even with its increasingly dense jungle of fast food "restaurants" and depressingly uniform chain stores. Where I am, the general thrust of public education is to promote social and moral development in an effort to prepare their charges for the challenges they'll be facing in the "real world" (of whole amber oceans of waving grains and cereals dotted occasionally with pig farms, three dozen churches, two dozen bars and taverns and roughly ten percent of the current local population living behind bars); the challenges, one supposes, of a life of poverty and servility. A high school not two hours' drive down the road prepares its students to meet the challenges of an increasingly bewildering technological society with a heavy sidebar in the arts and humanities. They might still be cranking out zombies, but theirs will be smarter and more sophisticated zombies with newer cars and whiter teeth.

Just how problematic might be getting the LTROI novel in your area of the country might depend on what your local economic and political environments might be like. If you're deep in the country with more churches than taverns and town meetings are always opened with prayer, I'd suggest not even trying to promote the novel. If you're in an upscale suburban area where all the English teachers have big patches on the elbows of their tweed jackets and sport carefully coiffed goatees, I'd suggest not worrying about it at all - they'll just baffle their students with huge gasbag piles of [CENSORED].

If I were thrust into a position of having to decide whether or not to allow LTROI to be "taught" in the local high school, I wouldn't question the kids' ability to handle Hakan's homosexual paedophilia, but I would question the local teaching staff's ability to present the material responsibly and provide adequate guidance. It seems absurd to have any objection to the idea of a vampire since no child these days can go anywhere without being hit in the face with one or two at least a couple times a day, but I could very easily see Eli's jumping into bed with Oskar being a problem for many people with children under the age of... oh, say, 16? - and with the same concern that teachers present it responsibly.

A fast googling around on the term "books banned in America" leaves me with the impression that violence and sex figure very largely in why a particular book might be "challenged", but the foremost concern appears to have a religious basis.

Your mileage may vary.

[jdudley118]

As I get my thoughts together, here is a quick list of the ten most commonly banned books in the USA, the land of the free! Violence and profanity are the main reasons for most of these. This is just a small sample.
http://712educators.about.com/od/banned ... _books.htm

Also, the book, What's Happening to my Body, has also been banned/challenged. A book about puberty for boys and girls.

[EEA]

To the high school that I went probably Let The Right One In would have made it to the library shelves. Most of the high school kids did not like to read because they were been forced to read. And when you do that to kids pressuring them to read and doing something they do not want to do. They will refuse and wont do it. I would read alone during lunch or breakfast because I liked to read.

[jdudley118]

To the high school that I went probably Let The Right One In would have made it to the library shelves. Most of the high school kids did not like to read because they were been forced to read. And when you do that to kids pressuring them to read and doing something they do not want to do. They will refuse and wont do it. I would read alone during lunch or breakfast because I liked to read.

I overheard this in Target last week from a teenage couple (14-16), and your comment reminded me of it. It went something like this:
Girl: "Who reads books anymore?"
Boyfriend: "I do!"
Girl: "That's so boring."

No hope for our future.

[gattoparde59]

I overheard this in Target last week from a teenage couple (14-16), and your comment reminded me of it. It went something like this:
Girl: "Who reads books anymore?"
Boyfriend: "I do!"
Girl: "That's so boring."

No hope for our future.

It did occur to me that Let the Right One In is a long book for High School students. People who actually read books for fun are always going to be in the minority, and I am not talking about the guys with goatees and tweed jackets.