to think Yr 1 school reading books shouldn't encourage playing at the local dump!

[luciemule]

DD (6) just bought home a reading book called The Dump (Oxford Reading Tree), where on the 2nd page it says "The Dump was a safe place to play and it had everything we wanted".

Am I being too sensitive but I thought parents were supposed to actively discourage their children from playing at dumps!!!

I have fond memories of playing at the dump when I was a child.

Would you rather she was indoors watching TV.

how is your 6 year old going to get there on her own?

Well, we read Stig of the Dump in school at about 7 and we all thought the dump sounded like the best place ever...not that I ever went, it was miles away!

I liked that book...one of the few tbh.

Good job really, as I the boys had it three times between them.

Hmmm, sounds like you're being a bit too sensitive to me! It's just a story.

lol my mum and her brothers used to play on sites that had been bombed during the blitz

dumps don't really exist anymore do they? we have 're-cycling centers' where the staff are very officious and wouldn't be happy if a child even dared to get out of the car.

you are being too sensitive, i think

i regularly go to the tip.. neither DC has leapt in to frolic amongst the bin bags and ruined furniture

unless your DCs would be inspired to go alone, which i doubt could happen, and even so, most council tips are staffed

so , YABU!

I used to love the dump! That was where I found my first ever nudey magazine. Ahh, happy days......

ok - see what you mean, I guess. I just thought it was a weird book to write for children.

In this day and age where everything is so 'playing it safe', I thought it was odd.

I still didn't think that in 1994 (when it last published) they wouldn't have wanted to actively encourage playing where there was buried waste, old rusty matress springs and unstable concrete pipes.

It wasn't the offical dump in the book - it was waste ground that people had just dumped stuff on so there was no-one offical to police it.

LOL - I didn't mean that my DCs would try escaping under the cardboard at the local recycling!!!

...ah... we had a den !
We were cool and groovy.
It was built of matress springs and concrete pipes and some planks and an old bedspread.
I had a posh friend. She brought some of her mums cushions.
i snogged my first boy there.
aah

Better than the Aesop's Fable one DD (also Y1) brought home about burning awoman tehy thought was a witch at the stake! That initiated interesting conversations that evening I tell you.

I agree with you. My son read that book recently and he is in year 1.

I think that book is unsuitable for year 1 children because the story line is quite grown up. Its good for junior school or lower secondary school children though.

My son also could not understand why the children in the book did not like the kiddie's playground. After self respecting six year olds like swings and slides.

From what I can remember about the book, most the adults were unemployed and my son said to me "why don't they just get jobs like you and Daddy?"

I think reading books should state age appriopateness of the theme as well the reading age.

My son is a magic key fan.

We've got a book called 'Under the Ground' in which two children dig their way to the other side of the world. Whenever we look at it with ds1, dh gets indignant and says it encourages children to do dangerous digging. I always respond that in my world no child young enough to be encouraged by a book like that would be left unsupervised in a position to do it. Think the issue is the same here.

luciemule dont be so silly. so i guess goldilocks is a moral tale don't trespass, dont eat the porridge? fiction is the suspension of reality eg it is not intended to be real or literally interpreted

i do hope you are joking

Well, I wasn't joking but maybe I'll now pretend I was so as I don't look quite so silly!

I just thought it seemed, as Reallytired said, that it was not age appropriate for a 6 yr old and the book was very out of date.

Oh i dunno am sure there are worse books. My ds1 has read aesops fables when he was in yr1 and enjoyed them. Didn't pose any terribly hard questions....now in yr5 he is reading a set of books called his dark materials

Did your dcs ever watch Come Outside when they were younger, with Auntie Mabel and Pippin the dog? Now that did worry me. Mine were captivated by the poo one, and I have visions of them scouring the dog bit of the garden for poo, picking it up with toilet paper and flushing it down the loo ......

Yes, but Come Outside doesn't say it's safe to play on a building site/sewage farm/factory/rubbish dump etc.

YABU. Its a story fgs. I have fond memories if Stig Of The Dump too.
Sounds like this book is encouraging recycling by suggesting you can get everything you need from a dump, wouldn't you agree?

ds had a fact book about rubbish,recyling and dumps which he loved and Stig of the Dump too.

Little Red Riding Hood....walking through the woods on her own and playing with a wolf

The three little pigs....the dangers of poor building standards

Hansel and Gretal, the woods again, and climbing into ovens

Snow White, taking fruit from stange old crones

Sleeping beauty, playing with sharp objects

and so on , and so on.

You'r going to spend a long time getting wound up

Alice drinking strange things from bottles

Firstly, it's not based at a recycling centre, it's a piece of waste ground being used as a dump (1988, book was written) so tipping was still prevalent.

Secondly, my DD knows that little girls with red cloaks don't meet wolves for a chat in the woods and that bears don't eat porridge etc. Plus, sleeping beaty pricking her finger illustrates how you shouldn't play with needles.

I wasn't meaning to be overdramatic/overprotective and of course I realise about fiction (I am soon to start a GTP course and become a primary teacher!).

In the book, the waste ground became a building site and the kids still wanted to play there, with lorries, cement mixers, concrete pipes everywhere etc.

At the beginning they said how it was a safe place to play. Old mattresses could have needles in them, pipes could fall/roll, ground is unstable etc.

All I'm saying is the theme of the book (not the reading ability) was aimed at a much higher age group (9/10/11) and said they didn't want to play at the playpark where there was a slide, swings, see-saw etc (all the things my DD loves playing on).

It said it was ok and safe to play on waste ground being used as a tip.

My mum always tells me the best place to play when she was a kid were the bombsites