Stick with the classics ... they not only encourage reading but also teach solid values.
Except they’re banning many of the “classics”, too.
“Huck Finn” has been banned in a lot of districts in favor of the inferior “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
Not to comment on the contents of the article - where does one even start? - people seem to scramble to get books for kids to read, when the classics are not only good for the reasons you mentioned, but they are necessary, for pretty much the same reasons.
That said, it is my experience that kids, when introduced to the characters in the original classics (not the rewritten versions), actually tend to enjoy the stories.
Kids miss out on so many character studies when they skip the classics, which could be the goal.
Of course, the school in question and the district has some social agenda and are beyond help. They don’t even see it.
Of course, as I “learned” in the English department as an English major, Moby Dick (Ishmael and Queequeg) and Shakespeare and a lot of other classics are really about homosexuality.
They see what they want to see. They just want it to be actually there for once, and that’s why they are pushing these disgusting novels. The Color Purple is becoming popular too, a lot of people don’t recognize its lesbian paganistic agenda.
Classics I knew while growing up were fun books to read like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Great Expectations, and so on. I also liked the early film adaptations of these books as well, the actors chosen were quite the entertaining bunch.
Nowadays, they needed to edit what Mark Twain wrote to sound less racist, or require kids to read books like the raunchy “Ragtime” by E.L. Doctorow, I read a review of the book alone, and it made me pretty disappointed that this was material for kids. If there’s any decent message about sexuality to explain to teens, it’s that sex is something that isn’t as big as it’s made out to be. Easily less than 1% of a married person’s life is spent doing it with one’s spouse.