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Column: Erasing classic literature for kids
Chicago Tribune ^ | January 29, 2021 | John Kass

Posted on 02/04/2021 2:57:37 AM PST by C19fan

When I was a boy about 11, I committed a crime that changed my life.

I stole a book. I was a book thief.

I found it in another kid’s desk and began reading, hiding it behind some boring textbook, and couldn’t give it up.

(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Education; History; Society
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I think I mentioned before the works assigned in daughter's English classes are almost all modern works. She can count on one hand the number of classics she was assigned. What a weird time we live in when reading Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dickens is subversive.
1 posted on 02/04/2021 2:57:37 AM PST by C19fan
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To: C19fan

At some point as a kid, around age 9, I went to a flea market and ended up with around fifty of the ‘Classic Comics’...running from 1967 to 1971. They did the shortened versions of the classic literature and led me read the actual books later in life.

I always thought someone should have packaged these in the same way, but for schools, and introduced them to kids around age 9 to 10.


2 posted on 02/04/2021 3:09:36 AM PST by pepsionice
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To: C19fan

Yet another deliberate attempt to subvert our culture and destroy it.

Think of how many shared ideas we have that “everyone knows” will be lost. Nearly everyone knows “Et, Brute?” and what it means. The ideas and phrases that stick in our common lexicon are shared cultural markers.
That will be gone.

Instead we will be left with an amorphous mass of meaningless drivel befitting the Idiocracy.

Yeah yeah...we can make kids read it ourselves...let me know how that will actually work out. My kids wouldn’t pick up a book under the threat of a stick. Let alone love it.


3 posted on 02/04/2021 3:27:37 AM PST by Adder ("Can you be more stupid?" is a question, not a challenge.)
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To: C19fan
Once I realized this was happening a few years ago I started adding a minimum of two "classics" to my yearly reading:

The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper
Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Kim - Rudyard Kipling

Just the thought that kids are being deprived of this richness is appalling.
Another one of the thousands of reasons to homeschool, if possible.

4 posted on 02/04/2021 3:46:37 AM PST by Psalm 73 ("You'll never hear surf music again" - J. Hendrix)
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To: pepsionice

There’s a publisher that has been producing classic literature in the “Manga” format. I got “Dracula”, “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and “The Jungle Book” for my kid. They also have “Anne of Green Gables”, “Huckleberry Finn”, and many others. They are accurate to the original texts; for example “Midsummer Night’s Dream” still has all the dialog in the original Shakespearean English.


5 posted on 02/04/2021 3:48:31 AM PST by Little Pig
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To: Little Pig

I bought some of those manga classics including Pride and Prejudice, Great Exoectations, and Jane Eyre. I thought the Jane Eyre manga was very well done.


6 posted on 02/04/2021 3:50:01 AM PST by C19fan
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To: Adder

Et tu, Brute?


7 posted on 02/04/2021 3:51:31 AM PST by Paperpusher
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To: pepsionice

Comic books were perfect for learning to read. Introduced new words and perfect for a kid’s time span.


8 posted on 02/04/2021 3:56:58 AM PST by Sacajaweau
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To: C19fan

The librarians have been removing classics for at least 20 years. Defund public libraries


9 posted on 02/04/2021 4:01:54 AM PST by Chickensoup (Voter ID for 2020!! Leftists totalitarian fascists appear to be planning to eradicate conservatives)
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To: Chickensoup

I started out in Library Science a long time ago. That whole field is over-populated with crazy leftwing lesbians. They are not to be trusted.


10 posted on 02/04/2021 4:04:35 AM PST by ClearCase_guy ("I see you did something -- why you so racist?")
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To: Paperpusher

LOL...yeah that

its early here...


11 posted on 02/04/2021 4:08:10 AM PST by Adder ("Can you be more stupid?" is a question, not a challenge.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

“That whole field is over-populated with crazy leftwing lesbians”.
Ditto that. Not only can you SEE it, but honest librarians will admit it. It makes one wonder about the hiring process among such types.

When I was in college, gay types dominated Radio-TV classes. One entire wing of our massive male-only dormitory was jam-packed with New York homos!


12 posted on 02/04/2021 4:17:39 AM PST by Does so ( Off-screen female to Biden: "Just sign it"..........Vote for new "SERF Party". )
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To: Little Pig

Can you tell me the publisher later when you have the time? I’d love to check them out.


13 posted on 02/04/2021 5:07:14 AM PST by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: Psalm 73

I started reading “Pride and Prejudice” yesterday. So far I like it a lot. I mostly read thrillers from our library (online books). I’ve noticed that many of those books are authored by women. Feminism has soured me on reading anything by a woman. I think all women with a public presence are feminists (or at least act like it) because they fear being spit out if they’re not.

Just finished “The Order” by Daniel Silva. Excellent. A lot of background on the Jews and Catholics is mixed in.


14 posted on 02/04/2021 5:08:42 AM PST by cymbeline
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To: C19fan

Imagine if she reads Orwell.


15 posted on 02/04/2021 5:09:07 AM PST by sauropod (#ImpeachMcConnell. #Resist. #NotMyPresident.)
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To: C19fan

I’ve actually read a great deal of the “critical race/gender theory” canon, all by accident. In undergraduate, I tended to enroll into my classes at the last minute. Consequently, I would end up picking classes thinking they were something entirely different. For example, I took a Techniques of Creative Writing class, but I thought it was “Technical Writing” (I didn’t know what that was, but sounded like I should know it). I took a Race and Gender and Crime literature class when I thought I was taking a class on crime literature.

I also had a nasty habit of taking one “for fun” class every semester, so I ended up taking a ton of science classes I didn’t need, graphic design courses, Karate, art history, etc etc etc. By the time I graduated, which took I think about 5 or 6 years (but in my defense, for the first 2 years I worked full time so I was only taking 2 or 3 classes per semester), I had a ton more course credits than I actually needed.

Anyway, as far as this “black” and LGBTQ literature is concerned, I can’t think of anything that wasn’t complete trash.

I remember one book about a black woman “on the lamb” from the evil police. She impersonates the maid of some rich and evil white family and gets away with it. At one point in the novel, the only person who was kind to her, a white man with down syndrome, is STILL subjected to the protagonists anti-white hatred and scorn. Literally the most innocent person you can imagine was still, in the writer’s eyes, a white devil who under different circumstances would be an oppressor.

There was also another book, I think called Forgetting the Alamo, or Blood Alamo, or something of the sort, featured a couple of butch lesbians trying to adopt an illegal alien kid. Before they can make the adoption, George Bush kills the mother (and I think the unborn child). I think the book was written during the Bush years. He’s not technically called “George Bush,” he’s called Walker, behaves and looks exactly like George Bush, and he rapes and murders Mexicans along the border (in all reality, all the rapes and murders are done by... other Mexicans!).

This is the sort of trash Odysseus and Shakespeare will be replaced by.


16 posted on 02/04/2021 5:18:51 AM PST by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: ClearCase_guy
"...crazy leftwing lesbians..."

Triple-redundant phrase?

17 posted on 02/04/2021 5:20:54 AM PST by Psalm 73 ("You'll never hear surf music again" - J. Hendrix)
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To: cymbeline
Oh, I think you're gonna' love “Pride and Prejudice”!

Because I'm getting old and my memory is sliding, I found a “Pride and Prejudice” flow-chart on-line to keep track of who-is-who during the read.

18 posted on 02/04/2021 5:24:25 AM PST by Psalm 73 ("You'll never hear surf music again" - J. Hendrix)
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To: Greetings_Puny_Humans

The publisher is Manga Classics.


19 posted on 02/04/2021 6:25:56 AM PST by Little Pig
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To: Psalm 73

“I found a “Pride and Prejudice” flow-chart on-line”

Wikipedia might have something like that. I need all the help I can get to keep up with characters and plots.


20 posted on 02/04/2021 6:29:44 AM PST by cymbeline
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