Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Non fiction vs fiction

We had been "rationing" the Harry Potter books for maturity, but now DD10 has lost interest in reading them anyway. So I'm not sure that worked out very well overall.

Siren14: I think it depends entirely on the kid. My DD does not internalize fantastic violence. The more disconnected from reality the material is, the less it affects her. Other kids can't handle the drama of a Disney film.

ETA: At 4 years old, you're probably still trying to figure out how he's likely to react. It might not be a bad approach to keep going, and keep an eye on your DC is handling it, with occasional reinforcements that it's all make-believe.

In our home, we look to enforce controls on various media due to sexual content. So, for example, Harry Potter is fine, but the Dresden Files (basically, Harry Dresden is Harry Potter grown up and living in Chicago) are not. I found a Carl Hiassen book called "Hoot" written for children and bought it for DD, but she does not get to explore my collection of his other works.

I was going to ration HP, as well, but having just finished the last book myself, I've changed my mind and intend to discuss intensively as my DC go, instead. DS8 is in book 4 with no discomfort so far (& he's the sensitive one).

My DC love D'Aulaire's and it makes for a nice springboard into non-fiction about ancient Greece. Strewing the house with books on themes, like the ocean and space, has worked on my fiction fan, while historical fiction has had the same effect on my non-fiction fan.

Thank you for the feedback. I do think since I'm reading it aloud, that allows me to discuss anything difficult with him. I think I'll keep going with the series next summer (he'll be 7 1/2). I think it's good to "strike while the iron is hot" as far as interest in books. Right now we're reading Peter and the Starcatchers and both really enjoying that.

DS9 mostly reads fiction books (HP, Percy Jackson, and a lot of "Diary of a Middle School Dork" type books). I let him get whatever he wants from the library, but *I* get a lot of non-fiction from the library and leave it out. On the couch, on the floor of the den, sometimes just leaving it in the library bag to be discovered works. (My kids are too messy to read at the table, unfortunately.) I'd say he reads, or at least looks at, maybe a quarter of what I bring home. But even if it's only a single book a week, that's a win. Since we homeschool, I will occasionally ask him to read a specific non-fiction book related to what we are currently studying (e.g. a book about Mercury when we were doing a unit study on the Solar System). He is usually quite happy to do this, even if he wouldn't have picked up the book otherwise.

Our bright spot for non-fiction has really been magazines. The kids have subscriptions to several Cricket magazines (Appleseeds, Ask, and Odyssey), Boys Life, and Ranger Rick. We parents get a number of quality magazines, including American Scientist, Smithsonian, and Science News. Mostly DS doesn't read the parent magazines, but he devours the kid magazines. And he does see me and DH reading and talking about the parent magazines, which sets a good example.

DD read the first 5 Harry Potter books at home when she was 5 and 6, but I told her she'd have to wait until she was older before I'd let her have the rest. That lasted until she realized she could just check them out from the school library.

Anyhow, non-fiction -- we have a bunch of magazines as well as biographies, histories, science-related books, and... well, anything that seems interesting. DD will read pretty much anything that's left laying around. (When we moved, I put all the books not appropriate for <8 year olds in my bedroom to keep a closer eye on them.) You can start with things related to current interests: for Percy Jackson, I'd think anything about Greek mythology would be of interest.

The drama of many Disney films is IMO completely inappropriate for young children. I remember being devastated by the ending of Cap and Capper. I know adults my age who admit to still being traumatized by Bambi. And when I showed our kids their first Disney film ever, the lion king, I carefully edited out the whole wildebeest stampede and Mufasa's death - the scene where Simba finds his dead father and tries to wake him up I did not even want to look at myself. I told the kids roughly what happened, that I did not want them to watch the scenes because they were too intense and frightening and started up the video wat the point Pumbaa ant Timon come in. They enjoyed Hakuna Matata and did not ask for the missing scenes.

My brother and I were carried screaming out of our first movie-in-the-theater, because Cruella DeVille was going to make a coat out of puppies!