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Do you have any "twaddle" books?
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I’m trying to weed them out, but yes, we do. Of course, when I introduced them, I didn’t mind them, but now I do. Anyway, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Little Critter, some Berenstain Bears (I think they could fall in between quality lit and twaddle, so I’m not so gung-ho on getting rid of them), most early reader-type books. My ds8 (almost 9) doesn’t like me very much when I tell him to read something else, KWIM?
We have some in the house I’m sure but try to weed out and we do our best to focus on aquiring good literature. For the record I do not believe all board books are twaddle! There are wonderful board books and not so wonderful ones. I’m sure that is thecase in many areas.
We have quite a few less desirable books. The grandparents and well-meaning other relatives can’t quite grasp what non-twaddle is, so we make do with those as gifts, but I purge them out asap. I do put my foot down on any books that have Barbies or any TV characters. Those we get rid of immediately.
Once we ended up with a ton of Deigo and Dora books. Where did those come from? Now I’m very specific about what we would like as a family. It’s hard though because one Grandma is a teacher and she just switched from K-2 to junior high, so she unloaded lots of twaddle on us. In her defense there were some really nice books too.
For picture books, some of our favorites might be twaddle… we like Mr Seahorse from Eric Carle. A lot! And Margaret Wise Brown’s Big Red Barn. We have read these two so much that I have them memorized. We do keep Little Bear and some of our Christian books, but even those are so dumbed down that I cull them as well fairly often. Oh, we do like The Snowman, too.
One thing I like to do now that my girls are a little older (8 and 5) is to stop at a certain word that is very central to the story and ask for synonyms. It’s kind of fun to do in the car and sometimes we decide we like a new word better and read the book that way from then on.
I’m currently “organizing” our books, by which I mean getting rid of lots of them! 🙂
I have a large personal library with 5000+ volumes and hundreds of those are quality picture books and even board books. There are plenty of quality picture and board books to be had. We buy zero twaddle and weed it quickly if gifted to us. With limited time, I want our reading to be quality literature. Occasionally a child will choose twaddle from the library, but I find that if they’re fed a diet of quality literature, they won’t settle for less. IMO, I’d rather have 10 quality books than 100 twaddle. CM has some quotes re this that I can look for later.
Happy Reading.
Christie
ETA. Definition of twaddle for picture and board books for us – do I delight in reading it over and over or do I cringe. We love Eric Carle and Margaret Wise Brown!
Also, look for a good guide like Honey for a Child’s Heart or The Read Aloud Handbook for plenty of great options.
We have weeded out most of them, although my girls still pick some up when we visit the library. I put a gentle limit on them though, especially ‘Pokemon’ comic books, which my younger dd loves to read. We read quality literature aloud, and she reads aloud to me as well, but I allow her guilty pleasures. Something in me feels that there will be problems later if I censer her too much. Pokemon is the most mild of the anime, I suppose. I watch for content and racy art.
So, as far as I understand it, the CM philosophy on Twaddle is that it creates an appetite for inferior things.
As we can probably all admit (especially this time of year) when you are eating junk food and candy, those whole grains and veggies look even less appealing. I think of Twaddle as the junk food of our library…we have some of it, but we definitely try to limit it and weed it out as much as possible. Reading the inferior writing makes the good stuff less appealing. A steady diet of twaddle makes for a flabby brain:).
Now, if I could only convince myself that Grace Livingston Hill isn’t grown up twaddle…I am hooked on those sentimental old stories, but I know they are pretty much junk food, too! Hard to practice what we preach, isn’t it?
@potpourri0710 – I feel the same way! I keep my three books and Bible going on my nightstand. During the day I generally find time to read from my ‘factual’ type books, but at night I am so tired that I keep reaching for the easy read. I love good literature, but for switching off the brain there is nothing like an easy read ;0).
Maybe I should use the technique that works on my kids – find a good book with high quality illustrations! I had to wean my 3rd grader off of Encyclopedia Brown that way. I just realized tonight that he has read Alice in Wonderland, Pinnochio (the real one!), Peter Pan and several fairy tales this week! That is a real victory for him, b/c it is self-motivated reading – something he has not been strong on in the past. I am thinking he is a visual learner, just like his mom.
Some twaddly easy readers have helped encourage our youngest readers to move forward – I am thinking of the Beginner level reading books. I think the key is to keep challenging them to move to ‘real’, living books. Once they get a taste for those, they will quickly let you know which books don’t make the cut.
Even before I new about CM or started homeschooling I always found myself drawn to books with beautiful stories and beautiful pictures. We have a library of several hundred books and I’d love it to reach the thousands. I guess our “twaddle” would be Dr. Suess, if you give a mouse a cookie series, etc. To be quite honest though, our dd gets enough good literature that it doesn’t bother me if she enjoys these kinds of books for now. When I was young I was raised on twaddle and didn’t even really know what a classic was until high school. Now I love the classics and even enjoy information type reading. Somewhere along the line I developed a love of learning through reading and I’ve never been able to figure out where it started. I can however, think of a few books that I read in 9th and 10th grade that I just happened upon when I was bored that lit the flame. They were what I now recognize as living books. So with all that said, I wouldn’t fret about some twaddle books. I also have great disdain for movie or cartoon character books. I only have two of those. One is a very old copy of Cinderella (My dd personal favorite) and the other is ‘The Monster at the End of this Book’, believe me I’ve tried to get rid of it and yes I cringe when she wants me to read it, but alas it was her fathers when he was little so it will probably sit in our library and I will some day cringe when my great grand kids ask for it!!!!!!
NJcountrygal – Had to chuckle at The Monster at the End of This Book – it is my children’s #1 request as toddlers for Daddy to read aloud because he gets into it and it’s hilarious.
Re: the Twaddle discussion I think the biggest ‘danger’ of feeding a child a steady diet of twaddle and only twaddle is that they develop a craving for it (simple, easy, junk food reading that does not use beautiful language and invites no deep relationships or thinking about the story). When we then hope to entice our children to read quality living books they find the taste to be not to their liking. It takes chewing, imagining, listening to the language, and thinking about. In other words it takes work and effort to digest!
Will a twaddle book here or there harm a child indefinitely – no. Will feeding them only twaddle when they are young harm them? Yes! Children are infinitly more capable of understanding and appreciating living, quality literature than today’s publishers believe. Feed them well!
The Monster at the End of the This Book is a favorite here, as well! My grandmother would read that book to me when I was little in her best Grover voice, and I do the same for my children. Sometimes I regret ever having begun the tradition, as it hurts my throat! I also cannot stand Sesame Street, and I don’t think my children have ever seen it, but this book is definitely not leaving our shelves. 🙂
I am also a huge Dr. Suess Fan, and my children love If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, a Moose a Muffin, a Pig a Pancake. If you go by the, “Do we enjoy reading these books over and over again and will we have fond memories of reading them?” question, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” These are all keepers for us. Sandra Boynton is another favorite.
That said, i know we have several that need to go. I have gotten into the habit of weeding out three or four books whenever I get the chance. Our collection is gradually growing and becoming more fine-tuned. I love the fact that my children enjoy a variety of styles of writing and are just plain learning to love reading!
Book hoarder here! I have gone threw the meaningless twaddle. LOL… Those books that we didn’t learn anything from went. However, I have a bunch of Berinstein Bear books also. Was my oldest childs years ago. I just couldn’t part with them because we use to read them at bed time every night. I did get rid the Clifford board books and some of the other books that were hers but those BBear books are just something that she wanted to pass on to her daughter. She even gave some to my sons so it is a little addicting. I think they do learn a little bit from them… They do have some moral stories. Even though they are twaddle their is a little character builder in them. 🙂 Ok, so I have to make my point to keep them…. LOL…
Twaddle or no twaddle that is the ?
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