Pickels, Doddles, and Webkinz R awsum

[GoldFinch]

Sadly, I have heard kids and teens alike say things along the lines of:

"Hey, you know those Lord of the Rings movies? They made books of them!" Usually followed by a comment about how the books are way too long to read. I've heard similar things about Potter.

These people need to be sent to the because that is without a doubt, ridiculous.

And I'm also worried that since the Harry Potter series is over...will kids still bother to read? I'm hoping so.

despite taking history for O and A level exams (age 16 and 18), I only was taught up to the causes of WWI.
I.e. no history after 1916.

Still, even if you haven't learned about Hitler in school then there are other opportunities in school to do so. My history class never got past WWI either but in English class we were reading "Number the Stars" by Louis Lowry (fictional story but still educational) and Anne Frank's Diary and learned at least something about it. Maybe I've just been wrong in thinking that Hitler and the Holocaust were common knowledge.

No, they read the Cliff's Notes!

I'm proud to say that I've never touched a single cliff's notes booklet in my entire school career and never will.

And Ferngully was a book? If I had known that back when the movie came out I would've read it first. I love finding out about movies that were based on books and didn't know about. The book is probably out of print by now though because I'd certainly look it up.

It reminds me of the tirade I went on awhile ago to find all the books/poems that Disney has based it's animated features on. The ones I want to find the most are "Bambi" , "Fox and the Hound", and "Who framed Roger Rabbit?" though the proper book title is "Who Censored Roger Rabbit". So many books and so little time to hunt them down.

[Ill_Used_Heroine]

I never read Cliffs Notes until I worked at the library, where they're easily obtained. I only read the ones on books I've read to death, like Catcher in the Rye, Joy Luck Club, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc., and I read them because I learn a lot more about the characters, themes, plots than I seem to get by just reading the book. Cliffs Notes have helped me understand characters I thought I already knew pretty well, and I enjoy reading them, albeit after reading the actual book.

[myswtghst]

Ah, so many things to say.

My mother used to say I was impossible to punish, as when I was grounded, I was perfectly content to curl up with a book, and she felt like a bad parent taking away my reading material. I too would find books to re-read while I was supposed to be cleaning, and hide under the bed to read them, and actually still do that, to this day. I actually used to read books when I got bored at sleepovers in elementary school.

Also, in this day and age of text messaging, MySpace and Facebook, I've come to the point where if you email/message/text/whatever me and can't use at least some semblance of grammar, I'm not responding. If I give a guy my number and he sends me a text that only includes one real word and 18 phrases of gibberish and abbreviations, he will not hear back from me. I have my moments and my spelling mistakes, but I don't want to date someone who can't spell and thinks that courting me with "tty l8er" is romantic, thanks.

Pertaining to the above, my gay best friend/lifemate and I have decided that we will no longer date men who do not read books for fun and do not have some concept of news/what is going on in the world of current events. I may not be on the up-and-up with everything in politics and world news, but I am aware of major events in the world.

[Gravekeeper]

The girls' response? "Ew, we don't read." He then replied by telling them that reading is good for you and broadens the mind. This apparently horrified them and they exclaimed that, "Reading is stupid! If we want to learn anything then we watch TV. That's what it's for, it's a like a moving picture book."

<twitch>

Seriously, take the warning labels off everything and prioritize ER patients by the degree of stupidity involved in their injuries. Let the problem sort it self out. ;p

I was the same as everyone else in this thread apparently, I *devoured* books when I was a kid. No book in the house was left unread, regardless of what it was about. Nothing could be left unread. I don't read as much as I'd like to these days. But I still can't stand having an unread book in the house. It urks me somehow. ;p

I use to come home with a backpack crammed full of books. The school library let you take out 4 or so and the public library let you take out something like 7. So if I hit them both right after school I could load myself up for the weekend.

Still, for all the fantastically stupid kids I see around me on a daily basis, I know the smart ones are at home reading a book. The only thing that worries me is the stupid ones are always the ones that breed first.

[iradney]

The only thing that worries me is the stupid ones are always the ones that breed first.

That's coz they haven't got any books to read

[GoldFinch]

That's coz they haven't got any books to read

The only thing that might slow them down is a new episode of My Super Sweet 16 or Rock of Love.

[Lil Bunny]

Seriously, this makes me want to cry. I was the freak in elementary who's parents let them order books from those scholastic things every time they came around. I was literally surrounded by books growing up. I even got in trouble for reading Robin Hood in 1st grade. I tried to give it back because I was getting made fun of but my teacher said "You checked it out, YOU read it."

I really do wish I had the patience to sit down and read anymore. I'm one of those odd ones that if I can't sit down and read it in one shot, I probably won't finish it. Shiny objects ya know. Though I have to say, I do read a LOT on the internet. Project Gutenberg is a wonderful thing.

Hmmm, maybe I should go finish "Lamb" while waiting for the plummer. *scampers off*

[Dreamstalker]

Are you serious that someone actually asked who Hitler is? What'd she do? Sleep through History class for her entire life?

She wouldn't last a day in my neck of the woods (large Jewish population who are understandably very sensitive about the whole topic, even the younguns).

From kindergarten to third grade I was in the Waldorf program, which while not banning TV doesn't want kids to sit in front of it all day. I didn't. I watched Square One, nature channels, and various educational stuff (this was back when Nickelodeon had good shows).

In the summers when I went to Audubon camp down in RI, every day my grandfather would take me to the local library and I would take out as many books as I could carry.

He'd gone to see Titanic just after it opened and after the movie was over and everyone was leaving he overheard something a young woman said to her boyfriend.

"Isn't it scary to think that something like that could actually happen?"

In 4th grade, I was the designated "Titanic geek" in the afterschool group when we had a Titanic-themed week (trivia, models, documentaries, etc).

[Andara Bledin]

I use to come home with a backpack crammed full of books. The school library let you take out 4 or so and the public library let you take out something like 7. So if I hit them both right after school I could load myself up for the weekend.

My local library would let me check out up to 30 books at a time, and I could keep them for up to a month.

I'd always come biking back with grocery bags full of books hanging off the handlebars of my bike.

^-.-^

[Tigress]

Does anyone remember the "Book It!" program? For those that don't, it was a program in school where you would keep a list of the books you read. After you read a set amount of books you would get a sticker put on a free button they gave you. After getting five stickers on your button, you got a free personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut.

That kept me rolling in free pizza. Since I was a vegetarian, I could order my plain cheese personal pan and my parents and brother could chow down on their animal flesh pizza. I pretty much depleted the library's backstock of buttons and stickers on my own and the people that worked at Pizza Hut pretty much knew me by name.

As for "no sex in Dracula," the movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola made the connection with the book and Vlad Tepes. But they turned ol' Vlad into a love-lorn wimp that saw Mina as the re-incarnation of his dead wife. Then he traveled to London to court her and they made with the soft-core porn before Mina went to Transylvania to nurse Jonathan back to health. During the scene where Vlad has Mina drink his blood, it's heavily sexualized and she does it willingly instead of him forcing her. Then the end has Mina killing Vlad and being all weepy about it.

And this travesty of raping perfectly violent literature created an entire generation of people that have never read the book that like to talk about how erotic the book is. Because they watched Winona Ryder boink Gary Oldman and Keanu Reeves.

[Becks]

I was going to multiquote, but that would take too long.

I've been reading for as long as I can remember. I LOVE books, and I don't have nearly enough.

I'd gotten in trouble in school for reading when I wasn't supposed to be.

Books rule!!!!

[Andara Bledin]

Does anyone remember the "Book It!" program? For those that don't, it was a program in school where you would keep a list of the books you read. After you read a set amount of books you would get a sticker put on a free button they gave you. After getting five stickers on your button, you got a free personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut.

I've never heard of the "Book It" program.

However, one month each year, my middle school would have a reading drive.

You would keep a list of how many pages you read, and after a set amount, you would fill out a slip to go into a raffle in the library. Then, each Friday, they would pull five slips out of the box and whoever's slip was pulled got to grab a handful of coins out of a jar.

All 3 years, the only people in the library at the end of the day on Friday were me and one other kid and we'd each end up with between $5 and $15. We used to make a contest to see which of us could grab more coins. He had longer fingers, but I had better technique.

^-.-^

[cinema guy]

Hmmm, maybe I should go finish "Lamb" while waiting for the plummer. *scampers off*

"Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" ?

[protege]

In 4th grade, I was the designated "Titanic geek" in the afterschool group when we had a Titanic-themed week (trivia, models, documentaries, etc).

When the movie came out, I let my college borrow a model that I'd built, complete with stand and some of my Titanic books. For years, that model sat in the attic and was slowly with dust and grime. It required quite a few repairs...namely a new paint job. Right now, it's sitting in my basement and covered in dust.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I'm guilty of having read when I wasn't supposed to be in elementary school too. I would just become so engrossed in the book I was reading when had a few moments of break time that I wouldn't notice the teacher had begun teaching again.

Same here. I had a teacher who would snatch books away from me b/c I'd finish before the rest of the class, then take me out in the hall and paddle me (she was the same one who tried to say I was possessed b/c I wrote left handed).

Needless to say, my mom was one unholy bitch when she had to show up at the school over that (this was a private school at that.)

Didn't stop me from reading though . . . I was reading adult novels by the time I was 10 and could understand most of the words.

What I'd like to do to the kids in the OP is to lock them into a room filled with nothing but books. NO tv, no computer, no stereo. Just books. And they'd have to read all of them before they could leave the room (unless it's a bathroom break.)

I wonder after they finished all those books if they'd still say reading is stupid .