Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing: A blast from the past
My daughter, who is in first grade this year, comes home every day with stories about the naughty boys in her class, girl gossip, and exciting info about what new games they are playing in P.E. It’s tough to get any info about actual learning, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out in February that her teacher has been reading chapter books to the class after lunch every day since the beginning of the school year. They read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, moved on to SuperFudge, and are in the middle of Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, all personal favorites of mine written in the ’70s by Judy Blume.
She has given them all rave reviews, so I bought them for us to read together at home. She thinks they are hilarious, and I remember loving them when I was a kid, so we both thought that reading them aloud with my pre-k son was a good idea.
We read a few chapters, and then decided to drop them for now. She still thinks they are great, but she’s enjoying reading them to herself. My son, who is 5 years old, liked them okay, but I think the humor and writing were just a little bit above him. The chapters were a bit long, and the social interaction among the elementary age kids were kinda boring to him. And I agreed – reading them again, I remember why I liked them, but I think these are the kinds of books that are very age specific.
I’m glad we bought them – my daughter enjoyed reading them to herself, and I know my son will really like them at some point as well, but for now, they will stay on the shelf.
We moved on from Judy Blume and recently read My Father’s Dragon, and it was definitely more his speed (although my daughter was not quite as interested). I’ll talk about that one next time. It’s interesting to me that when they were younger and two years apart seemed like a lot, they both enjoyed the same picture books. Now that they are getting older, they look like they are almost the same age, and ability-wise they are very closely matched, but their reading interests are starting to diverge, and it’s actually getting harder to find books that appeal to both of them.
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tanel I read Superfudge to Punkalicious earlier this year and the humor was a bit above him as well. He seemed to relate more to the bratty little brother than he did to Pee-tah, the main character. Sounds like 7 years is a better age for those books.
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You need to get that boy some boy books. Judy blume? You’ll turn him into a fancy lad