Woah. It doesn't sound like the sort of book I'd set out to read in the first place, but I really intend to avoid it now. I've locked it out of my dialing computer!
I'm astounded that some editor thought that this was suitable for young adult fiction. Less experienced readers are more dependent on the cues that traditional structure and form bring, not less. They get confused enough about POV and other such things even when all the signs are there!
I can remember being in Eleventh Grade Honors English, having read the Emily Dickinson poem that goes:
A narrow fellow in the grass Occasionally rides; You may have met him,--did you not, His notice sudden is.
The grass divides as with a comb, A spotted shaft is seen; And then it closes at your feet And opens further on.
He likes a boggy acre, A floor too cool for corn. Yet when a child, and barefoot, I more than once, at morn,
Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash Unbraiding in the sun,-- When, stooping to secure it, It wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature's people I know, and they know me; I feel for them a transport Of cordiality;
But never met this fellow, Attended or alone, Without a tighter breathing, And zero at the bone.
A classmate of mine, a bright enough kid, argued insistently that this was a poem about Jack Frost. What clinched it for her was that "zero at the bone". It's the frost on the grass that is unbraiding as it melts in the sun, she said.
Now if a sixteen or seventeen year old kid can get that far off-base and defend it, how is a kid Owen's age going to deal with a situation where they constantly have to go back and rework their mental framework seeking the logical clues that they need to make sense of what they are reading? Most kids I know that age would quit in disgust long before they got to the end.
no subject
I'm astounded that some editor thought that this was suitable for young adult fiction. Less experienced readers are more dependent on the cues that traditional structure and form bring, not less. They get confused enough about POV and other such things even when all the signs are there!
I can remember being in Eleventh Grade Honors English, having read the Emily Dickinson poem that goes:
A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice sudden is.
The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.
He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,
Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;
But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.
A classmate of mine, a bright enough kid, argued insistently that this was a poem about Jack Frost. What clinched it for her was that "zero at the bone". It's the frost on the grass that is unbraiding as it melts in the sun, she said.
Now if a sixteen or seventeen year old kid can get that far off-base and defend it, how is a kid Owen's age going to deal with a situation where they constantly have to go back and rework their mental framework seeking the logical clues that they need to make sense of what they are reading? Most kids I know that age would quit in disgust long before they got to the end.
Ickkkkkk!!!!