This is just a comment, definitely not saying don't read these at this age... but this is the place in reading where we definitely bumped into a "gifted gotcha" - my ds was way ahead in reading ability and was able to read high school and above level material while in early elementary. I gave him a lot of classics to read because I really wanted him to experience them... Animal Farm was a book he loved and read more than once... at home, during early- to mid-elementary school. During middle school Animal Farm was part of the curriculum, and it went over ok, because he was in a school with integrated studies, passionate and engaging teachers, in a class with other high ability and high-level-thinking students so there was a lot of deep thinking and discussion going on. Then in high school his first year English class (a class that was restricted to highly gifted students) read Animal Farm again... and by then.. ds was done with it
FWIW, his middle school teachers also noted that over the years they'd been frustrated that they felt they couldn't or shouldn't offer classics that their highly capable students were ready to read and would be interested in because those same books would be read again in high school, and they were receiving feedback from students and parents that the students didn't really appreciate that second (or third... or more) go-round in high school. That didn't mean they weren't able to pull together a program in middle school with insightful challenging literature, they just didn't focus on classics.
polarbear
