Disappointed by the choice of books in my son’s reception class

[dominose]

I am absolutely despairing at the first two books my son has brought home from reception.

These in my opinion are absolute slop.

There are hundreds of wonderful, beautiful, interesting, smart books for children, for all abilities and interests!

Why would a TEACHER of children choose these books to have in the classroom? I don't understand it.

It's not about length or ease of reading, these are not particularly short books. They are just idiotic. Totally uninspiring.

This is a topic that gets me incandescent with rage.

I'm just venting, and would love a fellow venter!

Genuinely I'm sure your school would welcome your help in curating the class libraries. Get involved via the PTA and do some fundraising. Keep an eye on the charity shops. Our school was delighted when we spent 5 years fundraising for our teeny tiny school library and staffed it ourselves. The teachers and Head Teacher weren't opposed to books, they just had no money or time to do anything about it.

Have you come across Oliver Jeffers? Lovely books and a huge favourite.

excellent idea, thank you!

If it's actually poor English/ grammatically incorrect then complain to the school and get it removed, it shouldn't be there. Otherwise I think you have to let it go.

We’ve got how to catch a star (purchased from the theatre after we saw a children’s puppet play based on the book) but I hadn’t thought about looking into his other works. Thanks for the tip!

When I was teaching, my discretionary classroom budget for the year was £100. Until my final two years when it was reduced to £50. I didn't buy a single book in the entire time I worked there. I needed every penny of that £100 and goodness knows how much of my own money, to buy items for each class topic that we covered. If I was still teaching I'd probably have to spend it all on glue sticks.

You do realise your child will have chosen these books themself, right? That's the point of library books. Promoting reading for pleasure. The children have free rein to choose the books they want. If they didn't enjoy it, well that's a life lesson in itself. We won't enjoy every book we read, and that's ok.

Funding is absolutely dire in schools these days. It doesn't even cover the basics. Some families sadly don't look after books either, so not all get returned. As a result, many library books will be donations to avoid losing or spoiling the nicer books. The best quality books stay in school, to be used as key texts or for the teacher to read to the children at storytime).

My class are very lucky to have quite a wide range of good quality books to borrow, but this is because I buy them myself in bundles on Vinted, or from charity shops. I totally appreciate not ever teacher can afford to buy books for their school, nor might they want to. Before complaining, maybe consider that someone may have dipped their hand in their own pocket to purchase some cheap books to ensure your child and their peers have library books to borrow. If your child does have access to better books at home, lucky them!

I really don't understand what the issue is?

As a Reception teacher, I love Sue Hendra books! As an adult, do I think they're amazing works of literature? No. Why do I love them? The joy in the children's faces when I read them to them. Children love the silliness of Sue Hendra stories.

Granted, Barry the Fish with Fingers isn't the best. Don't you dare go dissing Norman though! I've even dressed up as Norman before on World Book Day, and Supertato! 🍩🥔

Exactly. Let's face it, school library books are mostly aimed at encouraging families who aren't 'bookish' to get into good reading habits. They're aimed to make reading for pleasure accessible to children who don't have their own books at home.

For children who are lucky to have their own bookshelves stacked with children's classics, school library books are just an added bonus, to give them a bit of variety. Does it really matter if they choose the odd duds? Blaming the teacher for the lack of high quality literature on offer is bizarre. You annoyance towards them is very misplaced, OP.

Are you sure they didn’t pick these on their own from the library etc? My class go to the library once a week and can choose anything they like even if they can or can’t read them. Anything goes!

I have worked in a library and the little ones loved La La Llama. I remember reading Where the Wild Things Are at storytime because I thought it was better and they didn't like it at all. They need to choose themselves really. Sometimes they choose tripe and sometimes a gem. Much like my own book choosing.

Make sure you start on the chapter books now as listening is a skill and tempering story thread improves literacy

Admittedly Norman and supertato aren’t too bad.

I really can’t stand Barry though. I think it’s an horrible story and awful when he calls the other fish stupid. That’s a word I don’t allow my children to use, I don’t want them thinking they can say that to their friends. We’ve got several books that deal with the topic of jealously in a more appropriate way. That book alone is so dreadful it has put me off wanting to try the author’s other work I’m afraid.

I agree with you OP, the crap my son brings home from the school library often never leaves his bag. He's told me himself he just grabs whatever because there's nothing he wants! We get books from libraries, charity shops and second hand sites all the time (even buying them is often cheaper than comics these days!)

School budgets are the problem, a lot of the books have been donated so they can't be too picky. And for the many children that don't have books at home, it's certainly better than not having a library to pick from at all. It's still a bit sad though, so many are just really poorly written (and rely on toilet humour to get them interested!)

I've only read that one a couple of times over the years, as it's not a favourite of mine, so I don't actually recall off the top of my head that word being in the book. I totally agree with you about not liking the word appearing in books though. I usually substitute it with 'silly', if ever the word stupid comes up in a book I'm reading to my class.

Don't get me started on the word 'fart'. It seems to appear in so many children's books now. Regardless of my own thoughts on the word, I don't feel comfortable reading books containing that word to my class, as I wouldn't want to upset parents who choose not to use that word with their children. To introduce a rude word to them isn't my decision to make.

My DC loves these too. I didn't realise they were written by a collective. I'm now imagining them doing one sentence each like in that party game.

It's fart, not fuck. It's a perfectly normal word.

Lots of schools do fund raising for library books via the pta. I’d suggest a fund raising campaign op! Then teachers choose the books.

When my DDs were in YR, they could choose what they wanted from the school library. This was separate from the reading scheme. So my DD1, age 4, chose the Ladybird version of Samuel Pepys diary and various books on helicopters and ships. Story books as well but we always went to the library where I had some input. We talked about the library books because she chose them for a reason. I didn’t expect DDs to choose “classics” but you can buy them if you wish. My DDs enjoyed poetry and rhymes too. I’d just see these books as temporary fillers.

However I would ask if dc is choosing the books or being given them. One library for the whole school (or ks1) gives a wider selection too. I’m not keen on a narrow selection in the classroom.

Fart isn't a rude word! It's used in hospitals all the time, when health care professionals need to know about, well, farting!

The teachers have some say in our school and send out lists asking for donations. DC have also come home with some questionable choices, but they love reading and we have lots of books at home, so I’m not really bothered. I don’t mind that school has a variety of book styles - the point is to encourage children to read, and the wider the selection, the greater the chance a child will find something they enjoy. Sometimes I like a beach read, sometimes I want a classic, sometimes I prefer a high brow book - they’re all enjoyable.

In the older children’s classrooms, they also have a book swap/donation section, which is a good idea.

Our town library has closed, so in theory a parent can go to another town, but time, money for fares or parking, along with odd or reduced opening hours don’t always make it that simple. It’s a real shame.

Maybe you can offer to donate some books or start a school donation scheme within your school?

Our school also asked if parents could come in slightly earlier on a weekly basis to read a favourite book from home to the class - the children loved this and they were exposed to books they may not have otherwise read. Each parent/carer only had to go in once and it was optional.

The reading schemes are dull, but like you, I can see the point. Pupils have some quite interesting class texts as they go up the school, so it does improve!

It might be considered 'usual' vocabulary now by many, but when we were growing up many parents chose not to use it in their household. Whilst most do seemingly now use it freely with their young children, some still choose not to and, as a teacher, I choose to respect that by not using the word in school.

The scheme books are crap. But we have a good range at home but would like some small chapter book recommendations for boys 6-8 and story books for boys 4-5. We have the classics.

I can’t stand the Elephant one by Walliams. A rip off at the start and the wrong message, plus ‘silly boy’ stuff.

The other bad set is the Santa or whoever pooing everywhere.

When I was teaching I never got to choose or ‘curate’ 😂 the books that were in my classroom. There would be books in book trolleys in the classroom and you just had to work with what you had. There was simply too much else to do! In some local authorities there was a brilliant centralised children’s library service that would send out boxes of topic-specific books (as long as you had applied with details of your topics) but I suspect that these services would not have survived austerity.

A lot of it is about publishing industry ‘churn’. The only thing that makes publishers money is producing new books. So this poorer-quality stuff gets made and then finds its way into school libraries.

Yes - do donate what you want to see in the world, if you can. Or work with your PTA to get a purchasing scheme going.

But I think it’s important that adults don’t generally disapprove of a child’s choice of books. Because the derivative book about fairies, football or space, or the branded merchandise book from a big film, might be the thing that gets a child reading.

Certainly books in classrooms are "dumbed down" compared to what we read at school; I've seen this from volunteering in a primary school. I know that I would probably have gone straight for the "rainbow magic" books if they had been written then, but when I was in year 4 and above, the only books provided were more the more sophisticated ones. I struggled with taking in plots as I read, and sometimes I just kept reading the first few chapters again and again. But ones I do remember reading (and finishing) at primary school were: Over sea, under stone. The Silver Sword. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. And one of the older Roald Dahl books: the Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, which also contained the short story "The Swan", which was a rather nasty story which some parents later tried to get banned, because it was alarmingly similar to James Bulger (written before it happened). I read that when I was eight years old.

And yes, the Ladybird Classics were great. Although they were "retold for easy reading" versions of the original tales, they did make me want to read the full versions. I remember The Secret Garden, Oliver Twist, the Railway Children, the Happy Prince, Around the World in Eighty Days and many others.