Written, of course, by a clueless teenager who has been assigned The Stone Angel in English class.
The perennial conundrum: Make them read it in school and they will hate it; or don't introduce them to it, and they may never know the joys of that writing.
I agree, Debbie. I wrote a friend that I wouldn't be so hard on these reviews if Amazon would only get rid of its star ratings. Works in the canon are invariably skewed by students who are "forced" to read the book in question.
That said, when it comes to the perennial conundrum, I'm all for introductions. How I wish we'd studied Laurence at my high school. Instead, we read, Steinbeck, Golding, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Homer, Shakespeare... No Canadians. No women, either.
All these years later, I still feel I'm playing catch-up.
Written, of course, by a clueless teenager who has been assigned The Stone Angel in English class.
ReplyDeleteThe perennial conundrum: Make them read it in school and they will hate it; or don't introduce them to it, and they may never know the joys of that writing.
I agree, Debbie. I wrote a friend that I wouldn't be so hard on these reviews if Amazon would only get rid of its star ratings. Works in the canon are invariably skewed by students who are "forced" to read the book in question.
DeleteThat said, when it comes to the perennial conundrum, I'm all for introductions. How I wish we'd studied Laurence at my high school. Instead, we read, Steinbeck, Golding, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Homer, Shakespeare... No Canadians. No women, either.
All these years later, I still feel I'm playing catch-up.