[HPforGrownups] Recommended Book for 4th Grader

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 2459


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Flanagan" <jamesf at alumni.caltech.edu>
To: <HPforGrownups at egroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2000 8:25 AM
Subject: [HPforGrownups] Recommended Book for 4th Grader


>
> Like millions of other kids this past summer, my grandkids have been
> reading Harry Potter.  Nick, who is going into 4th grade was a
> special surprise.  He never showed much interest in reading or
> academics in general, but he devoured all four books this summer,
> with some help from his mother and Jim Dale.
>
> I'm wondering what would be an appropriate book to get him for his
> 9th birthday. I'm considering either The Hobbit, which I read in high
> school, or Narina, which I have not read.  Can anyone tell me what
> would be more appropriate?  What other books are kids in his peer
> group reading now (after HP)?


In addition to the books you've named, in terms of approrpriate, give him a
set of EA Poe's short stories (which I have found invariably warm the
cockles of any red-blooded American boy), some of the Sherlock Holmes short
stories, ER Burroughs' Mars or Venus or Pellucidor series (which as Arthur
C. Clarke noted, one must read before one is 17), and Richard Adams'
neo-Homeric bunny rabbit epic Watership Down.

In terms of what his peers are reading, would you believe the politically
correct Berenstein Bears (popular with the more sentimental sort of social
worker) and the dismal Goosebumps series, Stephen King deep-discounted for
kiddies.

    - CMC