Teacher Banning 8 y.o. DS from bringing Bunny vs Monkey books to school for his friends to read

[alixpally]

First day of school, and DS, 8, has been banned by his new teacher from bringing Bunny vs Monkey books to school for his friends to read - am I being unreasonable to be a bit miffed? Last year, he developed a habit of bringing lots of his favourite books in to school to lend to his friends to read during class reading time. This included Jamie Smart books, which were very popular. Today he came home crying because his new teacher has banned him from bringing any more Jamie Smart books, deeming them "rude, violent and inappropriate". I mean, yes, there is a bit of toilet humour, but it's not exactly Marvel comics - these are award winning books and frankly pretty cute and funny actually.
I can understand she may wish to discourage anarchic behaviour (and humour, I guess) but practically every book has violence built into the plot in some way (witness Grimm bros). I feel uneasy about a teacher who would discourage children from reading and sharing books. Should I do anything?

Seriously? You do realise the teacher’s ban only extends to school hours - DC could pass books to his friends after school or at weekends if it’s so important to them and the OP.

Similarly DC have all evening and weekends to read books of their choice. Not to mention school holidays.

Some parents seem to make a career out of undermining teachers and wanting their little darlings to be a special case.

Absolutely this.
The less unsolicited items that children bring into the classroom from home, the better.

The teacher is better placed than you are to decide what is appropriate reading material in her classroom. There may well be more behind her decision than you are likely to know.

Your ds can invite friends round to read his books at home if he wants to.

Saying that the kid should lend the books outside of school is fine.

Saying that she doesn't want them swapping them in her lessons because it's distracting or because she wants them to pick from the class selection is fine.

What is not fine is telling a boy who is excited about reading that she doesn't approve of his reading choices when they are completely age-appropriate books.

I suspect it's more to do with bringing things from home and lending them out - causes lots of arguments and the teacher ends up sorting it out. I'm a retired teacher and had to do this too many times.

Sorry if you don't understand the following anecdote, you're obviously not old like me! Many years ago when Tamagotchi were all the rage the kids in my year 5 class were allowed to bring them in on the last day of term as their chosen toy. However, they weren't allowed to take them to assembly. Because of the risk of them being 'stolen' I put all of these toys in a basket in the stock cupboard while we went to assembly. Well, I had girls actually crying because their 'pets' would get hungry and die without constant attention. Thank goodness it was the last day of term!

Yeah I get the swapping thing moving to out of hours. But it's kinda annoying to have two books on the go (one in school and one outside of school...). It's not about being a 'special case' it's just that some teacher driven rules in class do have a (sometimes negative) spillover impact outside of class.

In our case, I backed the teacher up and told DD that she could use it as an opportunity to read different type of books (including non fiction...).

Oh dear.

I have a reluctant reader whose reading wouldn’t be where it is without Bunny v Monkey and other Phoenix comic strips. For all of you saying it’s inappropriate and isn’t “proper”, given the choice of not reading or reading comics and developing reading confidence I chose the latter.

Our school has Dog Man as a library book and it’s never available as it’s so popular. Reading is reading. If they don’t take to it naturally, they’re never going to get the stage they’re meant to be at if they’re constantly struggling with regular books or having to read “baby books” it’s too demoralising.

I hope you also ban David Walliam’s books because they are rascist, mysognistic, prejudiced crap, but that dross is in every school library.

I spent months trying to get one of mine interested in reading as his teacher thought he wasn't reading enough. He loved sport so I got him lots of sports books and she then complained he was just reading books about sport. Sometimes it really feels like you can't win.

Phoenix comics and these books are amazing for readers. I understand you're upset. Can he share outside of school? Any reading is worthwhile and develops learning.

These were amongst my child's favourites and they are both greater depth readers.

I do agree she can choose the reading for guided reading time. What they read at home is up to the child as long as they also are following the school reading journey. Our school had some of the bunny vs monkey and dog man books on the accelerated reader for the children to quiz on.

The teacher has made the OP’s DS her special target with her banning only his book choice. That is fundamentally wrong.

btw, most people don’t make friends based on who lives next door. Most of my DC’s school friends lived a drive away. That doesn’t give the daily kind of F2F interactions of sharing books and discussing them. Unless you love that screen time and your DC do all this through a screen.

My DS, also 8, hasn’t read these as he doesn’t love pure comic books but literally the only books he has ever read to himself (and even then, only with much persuasion) is Captain Underpants which probably isn’t so different. I will happily buy him any old rubbish if it means he reads. But I wouldn’t get too worked up about this, teachers have been disapproving of popular books since forever - I remember at the same sort of age being told by my teacher that I shouldn’t be reading Enid Blyton as it was so poorly written - well fuck that, I still love Enid Blyton 😊

This has reminded me of reading books in English lessons at senior school. If I like a book I can't put it down and I was always getting told off for finishing the book when the homework was read to the end of chapter 2 or whatever. For me nothing kills the love of reading as much as reading it in little chunks over weeks and weeks.

BvM is hilarious. Looshkin is even funnier!

My son is a massive Phoenix fan and comics in general. He also writes his own comics. He has a fantastic imagination. But I suppose some on here would say 'he's not really reading'. Ah well I'll continue to carry the memory of the writers at Phoenixfest who all said really lovely things about his comic that he showed them. (Still recovering from the Jamie Smart meet and greet queue...)

And these books are gateways to other more serious comics (or 'graphic novels'), which surely generate really good class discussions. Would anyone say that No Country 'isn't really reading'? Or The Arrival, which is all pictures and would make an excellent class book?

I’d be really pissed off if my dyslexic child of the same age was being distracted from her set reading by another child bringing in other books and encouraging her to read them.

Schools work hard in setting books for different abilities. They absolutely don’t need you and your son meddling and thinking they know better.

have you tried him with diary of a wimpy kid, and the treehouse books?

Do it outside of school - he can still share his books and the school doesn't have to deal with the drama if books get lost, or damaged or if a parent objects to the content.

BvM are gateway books for many reluctant readers/children with SEND/literacy difficulties - especially at age 8, and especially boys. I consider Jamie Smart to be almost a god. I'd be moaning to the school I'm afraid. I'm a teacher.

This is really short sighted, and frankly just wrong. Reading for pleasure is a big thing in primary schools right now, all children should have access to all books and reading materials suitable for their age. 'Set reading' books are dull as sh*t most of the time.

Thanks, yes! He likes me reading both of those to him, but still resists my attempts to get him to read them to himself. Ah well - we keep going with me reading to him for now. Sometimes we take it in turns and he reads a chapter to me and I then read two to him (the division of labour is very unfair!)

Could it possibly be that a parent of one of the other kids has complained about their child accessing/reading the book so the teacher has discouraged him from sharing it? Or there have been friendship issues and internal politics around kids sharing things and fallouts over silly things? That sounds most likely to me. Very doubtful that the average teacher would be concerned about the book content at all. I'm a teacher and 9/10 if we have to ask a child to refrain from interacting with another child or stop an action that on the surface seems harmless, it's because the other child/parent has asked us to discourage/stop it.

The teacher is out of order shaming your son for the reading he enjoys. We studied comic books on my MA (on a course that then ranked third in the world), they regularly feature on university syllabi and have done for years. Perfectly adequate reading material and perfectly capable of being literature. Learning to read images alongside text is perhaps a key skill given that this is actually the dominant form of modern media.Is she going to ban the BFG because of fart jokes? Or Chaucer?

Is it worth a quick chat with the teacher to understand her reasoning?

So you would expect a headteacher to overrule a class teacher because a mum wants her DS to be able to lend his books so that other children can read them in the class teachers class time?? ….WTAF 🙄