Into the Lists

I took some time this morning to review the reading list for Queso’s first year in High School. Yes. I am that old. And as she is quick to keep reminding me, she’ll be eligible for a learner’s permit (precursor to driver’s license) within the space of the next few months. But her soon-to-be-driver-status notwithstanding, what she is right now is a bit of a reader.

Not like I was, goodness knows. Though… she spends a lot of time watching YouTube, and I spent a LOT of time playing Ultima IV and Wasteland, so…

Anyway, as an involved parent, I started looking over the reading list for her high school career, and I saw a couple of surprising selections (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Ender’s Game AND Ender’s Shadow? I can work with that), some reliable standbys (Twain, Shakespeare, Hardy, Hemingway), and a couple that made me roll my eyes (pretty much anything where the review mentions “magical realism” as a feature).

And as I was discussing the idea of reading lists and involved parents with some folks online as you do, a few things occurred to me.

Parents have to be familiar with the books on the lists.

Which pretty much goes without saying, right? If you want to know what your child is being taught, and that would be part of a baseline definition of involved parent for me, then you have to know what the kid is reading – and that includes being familiar with the books being presented in the classroom. Your kid’s class is reading Animal Farm by Orwell (like mine is)? You should know what the story is about. Because you want to be an involved parent.
Which means that parents should probably have read the books on the lists.

Which also almost goes without saying, right? I have an advantage in that I read a lot as a kid, so I’m already familiar with a lot of the books on Queso’s list – not all, not even most, but a LOT. I’ve read most of Twain – from Tom Sawyer to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I’ve read a bunch of Shakespeare, and what I haven’t read, I can get to quickly and inexpensively. I’ve read Animal Farm (but not 1984 – potentially a glaring omission on my part) and Huxley’s Brave New World, which is why as a parent I can say this year is fine for Animal Farm, but I think we ought to wait a year or two before BNW, because of memorable scenes involving polar bear rugs. Which isn’t a problem. Shakespeare, the Greek Plays – these are not slow reads for me, because I’ve been reading these guys since forever.
Which means that parents should be readers.

And that’s where my eyebrows went up a bit. I’m a reader. My wife is a reader. We’ve read a bunch of stuff – to each other, to Queso, to ourselves. I’m not all that interested in Twilight, and she’s not all that interested in John Ringo’s March Upcountry. And that’s all right. We’re both reading. But there are parents out there who aren’t readers. Maybe they want to be involved parents. And they understand that they need to know what their kids are reading. But they look at something like Thomas Hardy’s prose, remember what their own high school experience was like, and balk. Return of the Native almost made me want to gouge my own eyes out. Today, I would probably just throw it against a wall. Or delete it from my e-reader with extreme prejudice.

(What I did in High School was just stop reading it. I listened during class, took a lot of notes, and when we were through and the teacher wanted to drag us through the entire book again as a review, I started making comments from my notes – where I’d been quiet the entire semester. I got an A, having never read the book. It was an illuminating experience.)

And that’s what I’m thinking about today. How do we help adult parents, with all the pressures of the day, work, kids, health, finances, news, etc., become readers?

Is it possible? Is there a recommended book list for adults?