The BFG

After we read James and the Giant Peach Adam wanted to keep going with Roald Dahl so we picked up The BFG. Adam had read it at school last year and apparently loved it. I found the book to be dreadful. The novel is about a little girl who befriends a big friendly giant (the BFG) and the two plot together to stop the man eating giants. The story itself wasn't bad but I swear it was the most annoying children's novel I've ever read. The BFG is uneducated so he jumbles words up and it took longer to read because I was constantly having to slow down to read the gibberish that was always coming out of his mouth. I've heard people say they enjoyed this novel and perhaps I would have more if I was reading it silently to myself rather than out loud to my children. As a read aloud, I found it difficult to get through, each time we read was more painful than the last. I wish I could put a positive spin on it, but in truth I especially disliked this book.

James and the Giant Peach

I came across a list of best children's novels and decided I'd use the list to help pick the next book I read to Noah and Adam. Despite it being a hailed classic, I had never read Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach and decided to start there.

The novel begins tragically with the young boy protagonist, James Henry Trotter, losing his parents and having to go live with his dreadful aunts. A peach in their backyard grows bigger and bigger and eventually rolls over the aunts. James is in the peach with a delightful cast of friendly insects and the group of them set off on an adventure. My kids enjoyed it (especially when the word "ass" is used). At several points in the novel there are poems (or songs) that the characters sing, which makes it fun to read aloud. I'm glad I read the novel as I found it quite enjoyable and loved Dahl's sense of humor.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8

After reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing to Adam and Noah, we moved on to Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary. I found I enjoyed this novel more than the one I had just read them, but for them it was the opposite. Noah kept asking when it was going to get funny like 'the Fudge books' which they have continued to read with Alan. In my memory this book was funny so I had told them it would be, but though it is full of humor, it's not ha-ha funny, which is what they wanted. So perhaps I had set it up to fail by offering them a description from my memory of reading it almost thirty years ago. But there is something completely charming to me about Ramona and Beverly Cleary's writing. I'd go so far as to say that this book is timeless, as I enjoyed this book just about as much as I did when I was a child.

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Adam needed a break from the heaviness of the second Harry Potter book, so we took an interlude for some fun Judy Blume: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. It was not as good as I had remembered from when I was a kid. (I had loved this book!) I was surprised to discover that it's a character driven novel; surprised because books written for children these days seem largely plot driven. (Likely because books have a tough job these days competing for a kid's attention with all the video games, etc. Thirty years ago books were a form of entertainment, regardless of how gripping the plot-line... I can't help but wonder if it was Judy Blume that got me hooked on character driven novels?)

I wasn't overly impressed with my rereading of this child classic, but Adam and Noah sure were. We read the novel over a couple days because the kids kept begging me to read more and more. They found the book hilarious and are so excited that there are sequels to read. It's so special to watch a child get hypnotized by a book, pulled in and not want to leave the characters. Judy Blume books seem to have that effect on children. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing was the perfect novel to take Adam's mind off the darkness of Harry Potter for a while.