🚀 go-pugleaf

[ <sigh> please excuse the massive spelling and grammar errors.  It's
  getting worse.  I have a brain tumor situated in a place where this
  is a symptom.  I am on the waiting list for treatment, but haven't 
  started yet.  Obviously, I'm not trying to work on my stories in 
  progress right now.  Yes, I will proof-read this a few more times, 
  but that doesn't help much any more.  I don't post much any more, 
  this one took 90 minutes. 
]

On Tue, 04 Jul 2000 13:23:54 -0600, Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little wrote:

>Why not read it aloud to each other, taking turns on the chapters? 
>That's how hubby and I solved the problem of
[snip]
>Got about half-way through on the drive back down I-5.

It must have been frustrating between chapters looking for a place to 
pull over, or did you just balance the book on the steering wheel? :-)


Harry Potter came up talking to my daughter.  She's 19 and working as 
a Mom's helper this summer.  She hasn't read the books, but when I 
asked if she had one, her "Oh God no," prompted me to ask her why.  I 
was quite surprised that she had an entire analysis of what she found 
good and bad about the books ready to fire off.  Her basic reason for 
not reading them was that she read the first four or five pages as a 
conflict resolution when the kids were fighting over who got the book 
and felt they were too juvenile for her to read.  She is only recently 
understanding why I didn't want to read every book she found 
interesting when she was 12, so I think maybe she is overdoing the 
revulsion at reading children's books.
 
I pointed out that many adults read them.  The mother she helps is 
among the adult readers, having read the first book to be sure they 
were OK for her kids.  The mother was impressed, but not enough to 
read the rest of the books.  My daughter had thought about this and 
had her analysis ready. 

  o  Although written to a child's comprehension level, they _are_ well 
     written.  She was quite clear on that. 

  o  Many adults have a low level of reading comprehension.  This is 
     probably less of a factor in England than it is here in Canada, 
     and more of a factor in the USA.  Since they are well written and 
     comprehensible to a segment of the adult market not well served 
     by publishers, she feels they deserve their adult popularity.

  o  The plots are quite different from the usual TV fare.  When I 
     looked puzzled she pointed out the adults with reading 
     difficulties would see the limited number of plots used on TV 
     over and over.  If they heard that these books were 
     understandable by children *and* read by adults, many of them 
     would be interested. 
  
Obviously, this does not explain why erudite, well-read adults also 
enjoy the books, but I expect Stephanie is only starting to understand 
that it was the lacking complexity of the plot and the characters, not 
the length of the words and sentences left made me uninterested in 
teenybopper books. 


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Oisin  "Curly++"  Curtin                            ocurtin@SPAM.usa.net
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