The other day we had a babysitter come while B took me on a date. When I went to take her home, I noticed a book in her hand. I asked her what she was reading and she said, “I don’t know. I just had to pick a book from the library for my English class. I don’t even know what it is called.” I thought, how sad! How can someone be so apathetic to a book that they don’t even know the title! Then she continued. “The title is some made up word that I don’t even know how to pronounce. P-A-N-D-E-M-O-N-I-U-M.” I must admit, I was shocked. This girl is rather bright. Yet, here she was 16 and in the local high school, which is supposed to be pretty good and yet she didn’t know the word pandemonium. She thought it was just some made up word. She didn’t know what her book was about, and she wasn’t interested at all!
When I contrast that with the discussion the Webelos had at cub scouts the other night, I realize some things are going right- probably at home since these boys are only 5th grade. I asked the boys what they were interested in and somehow they got on to the topic of some of the recent movies- Hobbit, Life of Pi, etc. The clincher here was that my son has not been allowed to see movies unless he has read the book first. So, he read both the Hobbit and Life of Pi. He brought up how he preferred the book Life of Pi because the movie left out certain parts he thought were crucial (think 10 yr old boy potty humor type parts). The other boys jumped in. They too had read the book (or claimed they had) and agreed that generally books were better than movies. They were also hoping that the future Hobbit movie doesn’t mess up the story of the Hobbit too much.
How sad that someone just grabs a random book off the shelf that she isn’t even interested in just to check off a box in English class. How sad that words like pandemonium are “made up” and unknown. How exciting that these boys were reading great books and comparing it to the movies. They had passion and had been inspired.
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