How to teach a young child to recognize a "good book" vs. twaddle.

That is an easy answer:  I just let the books speak for themselves!  At home, I fill our home library with REALLY great books. I read them aloud often and I think after doing that children will naturally grow to respond, recognize and respect great books.  I think that even very young children will recognize a truly good story and good writting and will naturally be drawn to those types of books in the long term.   Sure when they are young they may be temporarilly attracted to ‘twaddle’ but I think that is more because they are attracted to the characters of illustrations.  I think that in the long term that a book about disney princesses won’t hold a candel to a Beatrix Potter  story or a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale.  True great stories will hold their own ground and there isn’t really anything you have to do to help your child see that. 

Also, I would like to point out as gently as possible that perhaps you should change the way you do things at the library.   You say you give her a choice to pick out some books and then veto the vast majority of her choices.  So see in reality, you aren’t really giving her much of a choice.  For a moment imagine what it would feel like to be told that you can pick out some books and then have 3 out of 4 choices refused!  At the very least, I would have to say it would be discoraging for the child. And for some children, it may even turn those types of books into “forbidden fruits” that makes them even more tempting.

So my advice is to either REALLY be prepared to give her some choice at the library or be more straightforward with her regarding your limits.  Don’t put the sense of choice out there if you aren’t really prepared to give it.    If you really want her to pick out a book, let her pick a book.  (You know, within reason.)  One twaddle book here or there is not going to ruin your child’s sense of taste.  If you want to give her some more limits in her choices, then give her those limits ahead of time.  Instead of just setting her free and then vetoing all of her choices, give her a choice between several books you approve.  OR, set a limit in the number of books she is allowed to pick out.  (Instead of four books of her choice, you could pick three and give her the complete freedom to pick one.) 

I tend to think of twaddle the same way I think of sweets in my child’s diet.  Sure I don’t want them eating cupcakes every day all day long.  But a cupcake here or there is not going to ruin your child forever.  Twaddle is the same way.  No matter how hard you try, a child is very likely to be exposed to some twaddle books in their life.  (At the library, at grandmas, at a friends, etc. etc.)  The point is not to limit those completly, the point is what you do in the long run the majority of the time.  And the other point is to let the good books speak for themselves.  Your child is intelligent!  Trust that they have the ability to one day decide for themselves what makes a good book a good book. 

Have you heard the story about how they teach investigators to identify counterfeit money?  They don’t run down every kind of fake money possible—they make the investigators become very, very, very familiar with the REAL THING.  They hold the real thing, fold it, feel it, smell it, look at it closely–the time comes that they can identify the fake stuff easily, because they know what is real.

Books are a lot like that.  ALL kids are going to end up taking in some twaddle as they grow.  Of course we want to watch out that this isn’t all they get, but if we are regularly, steadily, over years, feeding them the REAL THING, in time, they’ll get it.  They still might read something twaddley sometimes–it’s easier sometimes, you know?  But they will know the difference. 

When my second son was about twelve, a friend lent him a book he wanted him to read.  I was a little concerned, as it was definitely twaddle, but since it  wasn’t actually harmful, I decided to wait and see what happened.  After Son #2 had had it about three days, he came to me and said “This book is really stupid, I think I’m going to give  it back.  The story might be OK, but the writing is dumb and the characters don’t seem real.”  Cha-ching!  I knew he had it. 

There are some great ideas already mentioned, but as far as relates to your library question….you could bring a list of ‘living’ or ‘real’ books and pull out several choices that are acceptable to you.  Lay them out and let her choose a few from those.  You can also help her learn how to look at the cover artwork to ‘judge a book by its cover.’  Teach her that books with people in their underwear or gross pictures or witches or whatever are not allowed in the house because most likely they will be twaddle.  Not always the case, but it is a start to making her own decisions.

Heather

Maybe I can start teaching her how to HELP me find the books on my list so she’s occupied and she’s learning library skills. 

Another thought that occured to me was to set a limit as to how many books she can check out that aren’t on the list and maybe reward her or at least praise her when she finds books that aren’t twaddle.

But that still leaves the problem of how to occupy her mind since she would gladly read ALL the time and it’s exhausting for me to keep up with her.  The library is a 3 hour drive from our home and it’s not something we can do at the drop of a hat.

Thanks so much Karen!  I signed us up fro the bookadventure club.  She’s so excited.  She took 2 quizzes and has to re-do one of them and she’s excited to re-read the book to be able to take the quiz.  It’s already helping!  Thanks again.  I also checked out the One Year Adventure Novel.  Amazon is out of the 2 books that go with the teacher’s manual.  I’ve never heard of this before.  What other websites sell this book?  Also, what websites have free e-books?  I’m new to that one also.

Becky

Jen, I can identify with your struggle 100%.  One of the guidelines I have for choosing books is no “TV books”, you know, Sesame Street, Blues Clues, Disney Movies, etc.  The funny thing about that is that we do not have TV (we do movies though), so a lot of times my kids don’t know for sure if it is a “TV book” or not, so they just ask me.  I have one child that is very drawn to anything cartoonish so this one guideline has cut down on a lot of twaddle for our family.

I don’t say no to all twaddle, like for instance, the Henry and Mudge books. I am sure they don’t fall into the category of great literature, but we sure laugh a lot when we read them.

RobinC