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Literature recommendation in which no one dies…..
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Okay, I know that just sounds weird, but my 12yo ds sometimes latches onto things and I have to be careful what I choose for him. He is mildly autistic, and I have found that he just goes through these periods of “I can’t handle this” or “I must have that.”
Lately, he refuses to read or listen to anything where somebody either dies or is horribly mistreated. For example, he has been reading from the Pathways reader, New Friends, and one of the stories featured three brothers going to the store. On their way, they encountered a couple of bullies who were, basically, torturing a cat. We could go no further in the story as my son just refused to read a story where someone was pulling a cat by its tail. I haven’t been able to get him to read anything else in that book for two weeks now. This seems a bit strange to me as ds is rather aggressive at times.
So, we usually make our literature selections read-alouds. The last two books we read were Call of the Wild and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. The kids enjoyed Robin Hood for the most part, but it wasn’t a favorite of theirs. I thought I would choose something a little lighter for our next read-aloud. Last year, we read most of Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague series, so I chose her book Brighty of the Grand Canyon to read aloud.
Well…..about three or four chapters into the book, the old prospector in the story is killed. All I did was read the chapter title, “Goodby, Old Timer,” and my son immediately asked if someone dies in the story. He just refused to listen to it, even going so far as to snatch the book from my hands and toss it aside.
*Sigh*
I don’t want to belabor the point with him, so now I need to choose another read-aloud. I didn’t have a chance to pre-read Brighty, just skim through parts, so I had no idea this was coming. Does anyone have any suggestions for a literature read-aloud suitable for 11yo dd and 12yo ds (who himself only reads at a 2nd grade level), something in which no one (or no animal) is physically abused/mistreated or no one dies? I want to keep it lighter than selections such as Robin Hood, but sometimes my 13yo dd listens in to give herself a break from her reading of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, so nothing too young, if you know what I mean.
Thank goodness there are some good audiobooks available at our public libraries….just in case ds develops a temporary aversion to printed words, lol!
Okay…that’s harder than I thought it would be. I am sitting here running titles through my mind and discarding them…I guess most literature has some type of those things in it to give the storyline. Must be why I am hopeless about my movies…I hate the kind that make me cry…I watch them for relaxation, not emotional upheavals…lol
For a less “quality” literature section, how about The Mouse and the Motorcycle? My dd is reading it for fun as a break between more difficult selections and thought it was pretty fun. The only thing she can think of that is mean is that the mouse is tossed out a window, but clings to the vines and gets back inside. He is on a hunt for an aspirin to help his human boy friend who is ill. This boy taught him how to ride his little Matchbook car sized motorcyle.
Maybe taking a light-hearted moment would help him over the hump…
Maybe “Homer Price”? I’m trying to remember if there was any death or mistreatment, and I cannot recall any. It’s certainly not on the reading level of Jules Vernes and the like – but my 9, 12 and 16 yo loved it. It was a very funny light-hearted book. We did it as a read aloud. “All of a kind family” had no mistreatment of animals and no death – although the kids do come down with scarlet fever – but they are all fine. “Henry Huggins”…no death there….but I don’t recall about mistreatment of animals…..maybe someone can chime it. “Mr. Popper’s Penguins”….someone chime in – there is animals, and I haven’t read it recently enough to remember the content.
What about the Melendy books – The Saturday’s, The Four Story Mistake, Then there Were Five, and Spiderweb for Two. Or the Moffits – The Moffits, The Middle Moffit, The Moffit Museum. Ginger Pye, Pinky Pye, Gone Away Lake, Return to Gone Away. These are all fun, light-hearted books that my kids have all loved. Not up to the Jules Verne literary level either, but good stuff.
We listened to the audiobook of Mr. Popper’s Penguins a year ago. We enjoyed it and I don’t recall anyone dieing or being mistreated. What about Cheaper by the Dozen? Is there death in that?
Someone mentioned The Mouse and the Motorcycle. I’m reading it to ds8 now. There is a mention of the mouse’s father having been poisoned by an aspirin, implying that he had died.
I haven’t read Cheaper by the Dozen, but I have seen the movie (the original, not the Steve Martin remake). The father dies at the end of the movie.
There is no death or mistreatment of animals in Homer Price or the Henry Huggins books.
Is there any death in Tom Sawyer? I can’t remember offhand if Injun Joe is killed or just sent to jail.
Well, I appreciate all of your suggestions. I located Swallows and Amazons at a library about 1 & 1/2 hours from here, and they’ll send it to our local library, so yay! As I was reading a plot summary of that book, I was reminded that all of my kids enjoyed the early volumes of The Boxcar Children and also The Railway Children as read-alouds last year, so I think they would enjoy this one.
I recall that I read Homer Price when I was a child, but I don’t remember the content!
I’ll have to take another look at it. Also, we read a few Henry Huggins books last year, and maybe we ought to pick up another one in the series.DawnD, most of the titles you provided sound familiar (and I know I read some of the Moffit books as a child), so I’ll have to check them out.
Thanks, everyone….I’ll let you know when the next idiosyncrasy pops up with my son, lol! He is such a unique child, we have had to rethink our responses to him over the years. For example, when he was about 3 and had just begun talking, we discovered he frequently would say the funniest things. However, when we laughed at his comments, he would cry and throw himself repeatedly against his “couchie” (favorite chair). We learned to often say, “I love how you make me laugh with the things you say!” before we started laughing…..hard to do, but he finally figured out that causing laughter can be a very good thing!
In Tom Sawyer, Tom and Huck witness Injun Joe killing someone, that is why Injun Joe went into hiding in the cave.
I had forgotten the aspirin thing of the mouse dad in The Mouse and the Motorcycle.
Homer Price is wonderful. So is the follow-up book Tales from (of?) Centerburg. =)
I’ll have to take another look at it. Also, we read a few Henry Huggins books last year, and maybe we ought to pick up another one in the series.
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