Thread of assistance for people who find it tricky remaining breezy about the books their dc choose in the library.

[Slubberdegullion]

I want to be breezy.

Reading is great right? Any sort of reading yes? Even books about puppies and unicorns and princess unicorns and boarding schools for unicorn princesses? And RAINBOW FAIRIES. may curses rain down upon you you tiny little winged bastards

I want the benign smiling face of library joy, not the Argh! Nooo! Really? Face, with the hopeful fingering and glances at the Michael Morpogos.

Tips gratefully received.

I remember reading H P Lovecraft at around 11 or 12. "the Colour From Space" .....errrrrghhhhhhhh I swear that story actually made it's very own neural pathways in my brain!

motherinferior - my dad used to tell me I should be reading 'books on etiquette' to improve my table manners I was NINE, and later diagnosed dyspraxic. He did try to get me to read Lord of the Rings, but I only ever saw him read thrillers with foil lettering on the cover and some odd vaguely pervy looking books called Tobin or something. He was someone who thought Oxfam was 'overpriced' so they were probably from the 10p bin at Help The Aged.

Anyway, I had a reading age of 11 by the time I was three, which meant that I skipped ahead and used to read things like 80s Jackie annuals (I still wonder what 'shaders' are and why you want to put them on your face) and then Adrian Mole and Hitchhikers Guide when I was eight or so. I absolutely loved Anastasia, and Paula Danziger too. I did go through a Blyton phase when I was five or six, I just used to ignore the bits that seemed a bit dubious. I still remember the French girl at St Claire's that never went in the sun because she was scared of a tan. And in my teens, when i was a dorky unpopular kid, I read tons of those 1980s Sweet Dreams romance books picked up at jumble sales. If anyone knows what a 'slam book' is, please do enlighten me

I bought my 15yr old nephew The Catcher In The Rye, Catch 22 and A Clockwork Orange for Christmas, plus Zazie in the Metro. I r cool auntie.

Shamefully, the last book I finished on my Kindle was a horrid piece of chick-lit about some dumb broad who goes through the lonely hearts and then meets some lesbian stereotypes from 1974. I'm reading some Richard Ford at the moment and it isn't going down nearly as quickly...

I get sent The Book People catalogue - are the hamster books part of a series that also has magical cats and dogs?

I was the girl at school who handed round the mills and boons with the sexy pages dogeared for ease of finding...
Now I'm a librarian
It must be in my blood!

I'm going to be 30 in May and my mother still despairs of my Nora Roberts addiction. :o

It's a stage in building reading confidence. Plus, it's comforting to read something familiar, else why is Jodi Picoult so popular? I read her books when I want to read something where I know vaguely how it's going to go before I pick it up.

DD1 (23) and her friends read Jacqueline Wilson ad infinitum. DS read books about engines etc (is now a design engineer and thinking of PhD) and a series called Goosebumps. DD2 reads nothing she does not have to read for school & exams except biogs of comedians/presenters/so-called celebs. Yet, is the one of my three with the best exam results. I have had my nose in a book since I learnt to read.

Rainbow Fairies are tame compared to bloody Tiara Club where EVERY other word IS in CAPITALS

fairies sound fantastic compared to yet another Beast Quest book - the woman in our local bookshop said they aren't even written by a real person, but by a committee of editors. I can't face another one and have got DS into the Spydog series and How to Train your Dragon.

Rainbow Magic is also written by a committee - reminds me of 1984, and the committee written books in that.

I did ban the Katie Price pony books when DD1 was going through the pink glittery books in the library. They're the only books I've ever vetoed.

Purplepidgin I now need to re read all the Xanth books, I think there may be a few I missed back in the day, thanks for remindining me of them :)

When I taught year 5 I always had girls wanting to read trashy babysitter club, Mary Kate and Ashley type books, so we agreed that if they were their school books they had to alternate between them and something more "worthy".
After all we all like a bit of easy reading now and again.

I just read my way through the local library. At 13 I had a better knowledge of the stock than the staff and they were very miffed to find out I wasn't old enough to be their Saturday girl (they took me straight in when I hit 16)

I still don't understand what's so bad about Lady Chatterley though

When you're young, you really can't discriminate. When I was 14, I had two favourite books, both of which were unputdownable. One was Jane Eyre. The other was Moonraker's Bride. No, not an obscure classic you haven't heard of, but a piece of out-and-out trash romantic fiction. But I loved both of them, and I honestly wouldn't have been able to see why Jane Eyre was better than Moonraker's Bride.

After posting that, I googled Moonraker's Bride to see if anyone else remembered it or whether it had disappeared into obscurity. Imagine my surprise on discovering that it still has loads of fans and loads of five star reviews on Amazon. I might even read it again to see if it's as good as I remembered...

The trick is to buy a Rainbow Fairy/Beast Quest set to have at home then they're old hat.

I have to say I do think poor old RF get more bashing than they deserve. Admittedly they're not great works of literature but when kids come off reading schemes and venture into chapter books they need formulaic easy to read stuff to give them confidence.

Bash em all you like but they do get kids reading. We had the entire Daisy chapter book collection,ditto Worst witch,Ottoline,Far Away Tree,Heidi etc dd would only flick through to begin with.After a couple of months working her way through a masseeeeeve RF box set(thanks mil)she started devouring anything and everything.

Dtwin 1 was the same.Only dipped in and out of paperbacks until he literally read every Beast Quest/Horrid Henry he could get his hands on.Now he reads masses of other good stuff.

We're currently trying to avoid the Slime Squad books and huge Star Wars manuals that we take out time after time and have to lug home.I read some shite (sweet Dreams and Sweet Valley High) but still ended up with an Eng Lit degree.

My Year 8 teacher used to refer to Point Horror books as 'chewing gum for the eyes', which must have made the reluctant readers who loved them feel delightfully inferior. She also banned Just 17 from the classroom...

MrsHeffley - I do agree that the RF aren't that bad in the sense that they are ideal for those just gaining confidence reading (repetitive plot, limited vocab, plenty of pictures etc.).

What I really object to is the whole surrounding marketing frenzy - Rainbow Magic magazine, cut out fairy books, etc etc; they're all designed to part you from your cash while giving as little as possible in return.

I guess that's why I didn't mind Animal Ark; they're simple early stage reading without all the full-on commercialisation.

yes, they do grow out of the fairy princess unicorn phase.

Mine are now 7 and 9. I let them choose whatever they like from the library to read to themselves, but I refuse to read anything out loud that I don't enjoy myself.

I got bored half way through the endless Enid Blyton boarding school books and made her read the rest herself, which she happily did. At the moment I'm reading dd2 the 'how to train your dragon' series, which we are all really enjoying. I'm reading dd1 a mixture of books - the last one was 'gansta granny' by david walliams (really funny) and now I'm reading 'buried alive' by jacqueline wilson.

I try to steer them away from the Jacqueline wilson books 'for older readers' as I'm not sure they are ready for those yet.

Plus the Rainbow Fairy books are so so so blatantly Girl Books. The message seems to be that if you are a good girlie girl who likes frocks and sparkly shite then fairies will come to play with you

Ahhh but do kids want to read them.

Dd just adored RF in a way she wouldn't have with Animal Ark sadly.The addiction gets her reading book after book.She loved the funky clothes,different themes and has a had a strange fascination with those goblins.Ours didn't cost too much,think mil got the 4 entire sets from The Book People for £12.Haven't seen all the other stuff.

Dtwin 1's addiction to Beast Quest,Super Powers,Horrid Henry is the same. Animal Ark just didn't get him reading book after book.

The thing with kids is you have to go with what they want to read.Pushing them into what you want them to read is just pointless particularly in the early days as you won't find them continuously with their head in a book that doesn't excite them.

I found this out with my twins.Dtwin 2 was an avid reader from day one,anything and everything.He was a joy to get books for.Enid Blyton was his first fav and he read the lot,then Mr Gum,Spiderwick etc,etc.I tried to push dtwin 1 onto the same books and got nowhere,he just didn't read other than when I made him.The minute I gave in to his interests and books he loved he was off.

Due to this I had a far more relaxed approach with dd and her addiction to "the tiny winged bastards".Having said that I've just bought 2 box sets of Felicity Wishes books for a bit of variety in fairydom.Dd is a very avid reader now though,anything and everything.Ivy and Bean,Ottoline have been a recent discovery-they're brilliant!

We love the David Walliams books and the How to dragon books too.Wimpey Kid which I got for my reluctant reader has been a hit with all 3.We've got the lot, they had a massive row over who was reading the latest one first!

When I was 13 my favourite book was this:

<a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=purity%27s+passion+janette+seymour+amazon&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1024&bih=643&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnso&tbnid=TGdySzzOmLybXM:&imgrefurl=www.goodreads.com/review/show/107813048&docid=Vg05p4PecgyfeM&itg=1&imgurl=photo.goodreads.com/books/1276705337l/454728.jpg&w=276&h=455&ei=I3MxT-ThO4zzsgbF5KCEDQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=428&sig=103472035180222175814&page=1&tbnh=124&tbnw=78&start=0&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0&tx=13&ty=66" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">vile

Smutty trash. And my mum gave it to me! I've never forgotten the scene where the platinum blond heroine is stripped naked in a slave market, and fondled by all the Arab slave traders

Mind you, it was a step up from Barbara Cartland, who I'd been reading obsessively since the age of 10.

DD (12) reads Louise Rennison books pretty much exclusively. Her soap watching schedule doesn't leave her the time or energy for anything more taxing.

I hope that when my DD is at the stage of "free reading" rather than on a level series at school and reading the picture book stories with me taht I will not be judgmental! I want to encourage her to read as much as possible.....though I dread these fairy books and Horrid Henry!

I read lots and lots of Enid Blyton as a child. DH happily says he read loads of trashy science fiction, Doctor Who and Star Trek novels and Biggles (which he swears was very good literature!). At 12 I dscovered Stephen King, Shirley Conran and Judith Krantz. I had about two years of total trash. Debutantes where one of the leads loses her virginity to a coke bottle may be the worst! Then for 10 years I went through a very snobby phase with literature and looked down on anything that wasn't a classic or prize winning. I was appalling.
But I learnt my likes and dislikes and can now appreciate trash, genre fiction, classics and contemporary literature fiction. My parents never ever vetoed anything I read and I hope I can be as encouraging.

Haven't read whole thread but I have to back letting them read trash as long as they read. I read a lot when I was little and I was always one of the advanced/fast readers in the class. But aged 8 upwards I did read a LOT of rubbish - point horror, sweet VH, ramona quimby, Judy blume, enid blyton - anyone who churned out the same old crap with a different cover, I hoovered up. I got thru it and still went on to be transported, captivated and overjoyed by really good writing. That doesn't mean that I don't have occasional lapses into Mills and Boon