Reading the people

So it seems to me that one of the items on the good parent list would be "reads the books your children are reading."  Of course we all start out reading those books because we are the ones doing the reading!  But once your people take off and read on their own then it is up to the parent to decide: am I in or out?  Theoretically I think we should be in: by reading what our children read we can both keep tabs on potential pitfalls and get another clue about how our people think.  On the pitfalls -- a few summers ago when Harriet the Spy was popular we did what any sensible family would do -- get all the other books written by Louise Fitzhugh and so the girl child started reading The Long Secret and the boy child started reading Sport.  At this point we would read with the people maybe 1/3 of the time -- so some days they would read to themselves and other days we would read to them.  So I was the one reading when a police officer in Sport used the n-word.  But the girl child had to ask me what menstruation was from one of her reading alone nights.  While the n-word made Sport unacceptable reading for a rising 2nd grader, the menstruation part was not problematic except that it was of no interest to my reader -- and so here the lesson was: read, or at least pay attention to, the books your people read just to keep tabs on the issues that come up (my uncle gave me a 'teen in the french revolution' novel when I turned 12 that included my first enounter with the "string of pearls" phenomenon -- I did not fully understand, except to know that I should not ask my mother).

The opportunity is that by reading what your people read you gain insight into their largely opaque heads.  And yet....I dislike fantasy....one of my people loves the fanatsy: the dragons, the elves, the endless battles, the inexplicable places and spaces.  And I don't wish to read these books.  But to only read the books I am interested in that my people read may be a bad move.  But this week I did just that -- avoiding the fantasy that I have promised I will read (The Looking Glass Wars) I instead read Betti on the High Wire by Lisa Railsbeck.  Babo, who will be renamed Betti by her adoptive parents, is the child of circus performers killed in a nameless war in a nameless country.  Babo has lived as the leader of a group of forgotten children, looked after by Auntie Moo and avoiding soldiers and the potential ministrations of a local missionary woman.  But on occasion adoptive parents come and one day someone wants Babo.  Most of the book is about her adjustment to life in the US.  Written from Babo's perspective the book does a nice job of seeing American life from a radically different perspective.  I disagree with the author's refusal to name Babo's country.  Railsbeck notes in the afterword that she wants her readers to think that Babo's life could be happening in many countries around the world.  I think, instead, that it makes Babo less real -- by being any child she becomes no real child and her home country seems to be little other than the circus that Babo remembers almost as a fantasy.  Babo makes very clear that she does not want to leave her country or her parents (who she thinks are alive -- and my reader also thought the parents were alive, although I thought the text was fairly clear on their death in the war -- this meant my reader was certainly more critical of the idea of foreign adoption).  The adoptive parents are portrayed with a nice mixture of humor and patience and interest in Babo's past (an interest it is hard to satisfy as her country of origin is not named).  My reader described the book as funny and sad.  On the other hand that same reader declared the thoughts in her own head as her own -- and so there went my great moment of insight into reading a book to read my people. 

Perhaps the dragon book will work better.  Shoot.