Reading with the kids.
Some suggestions, thoughts, feedback and commentary from recent book reading aloud with the kids. I'll try and update this occasionally with books as we read more, but since this is the first here's how far we've come.
So far we have read:
Animorphs 1, 2 and 4- Like Harry Potter I've taken to more heavily editing as I read through Animorphs, not only for violence or scary stuff, although I do some of that, but more removing the repetitive introduction parts otherwise I probably couldn't get through more than one book. In Harry Potter there's a lot of re-introducing the character and world at the beginning which I skip but in Animorphs there are just a lot of longer unnecessarily detailed descriptions of events or surrounding or things that I generally skip. I also skip a lot of that parts that continue to delve into gruesome detail about the scary looming alien threats and impending doom, generally any the overly negative parts because I figure there's enough negativity out there and we mostly emphasize the parts being in the animals and their adventures which has plenty of creativity and fun on its own. Apparently those parts came more from the husband that KA Applegate herself.
Of course with Sc Fi illustrations are a lot more difficult although my recurring argument continues to be that compelling imagery is what limits the transition for Sci Fi literature from books to screens are the visuals. So for me the biggest reason why the TV series didn't do nearly as well as the books is because there was no serious visual universe rooted in the original books and it is not as easy to produce compelling sci fi visuals as some may think. This despite the fact that there are those ongoing descriptions in the books my suggestion would be that the visuals and illustrations should have taken the place of the descriptions as they convey the same thing in a more accessible and less choppy way and said illustrations or imagery would also have given the book more ability to transition to the screen. There also seems to be a re-emergence of the 90's with its wild dot com optimism, imaginative unknowns surrounding DNA prior to sequencing. It seems that there was more cultural imagination about DNA during the 90s that subsided as we learned more, but the books re-ignited some of that wonder despite their limitations.
Animorphs Skippable books
Of course reading aloud and re-reading Harry Potter as an adult has been very different in so many ways- like now I'm thinking what values and lessons is this story teaching? What parts do I need to edit at this age? and so on. I ended up editing mostly violent death related parts and emphasizing the parts where Dudley exemplifies the extremes of selfish behavior. And prodding when we slip into this type of behavior. This also brought up Harry and Rowling's conflicted relationship with food. While I appreciate the Dursley foibles and extravagant food descriptions at Hogwarts etc. it does seem to set up a slightly unhealthy relationship with food of either seeing it as rewards in excess or withheld as punishment. The cultural differences between UK and US were generally refreshing though and I found myself committing to a British accent for most of the dialogue which was a fun adventure in accent attempts. I started with a kind of Cockney accent then Australian then with a few tweaks like pronouncing a hard R in the middle of words but not at the end, I think finally hit closer to British ( Harry Potah is the right way) although I think I'm still might be missing a few nuanced sounds.
Matilda- coincided nicely with the kids watching the musical. Similar to watching Harry Potter it was fun to compare with the movies. There are some universal themes to Harry Potter and English authors in general. Miss Honey's poverty and Harry's both resulting in being thin and a victim and also coincidentally /morally superior.
James and the Giant Peach-We mostly read because we had an illustrated copy.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- We generally skipped because they cover it in detail in school.
Wayside Stories - We started and read about half of it but it was too close to bringing me into the mindset of a kid in school and I found it was easy enough and entertaining for them to read on their own.
Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites Book 1-This one we started reading on a Sunday to keep with the theme of the day although it really starts with a shocker, enough to get the kids attention anyway. Similar to Harry Potter though I had to immediately edit pretty heavily some parts. They didn't really understand the beer descriptions and we ended up agreeing that he was drinking soda or champagne:) The other part I had to heavily edit was the sister being taken by the Lamanites and references to concubines and Harems. Other that the themes of duty, patriotism, moral courage in the face of danger largely overlapped with the Book of Mormon itself and it actually conveyed them in a way that kids could understand which was really amazing. Similar to Harry Potter there are some really visual descriptions especially of when they get to Zarahemla that could really benefit from an illustrated version as has been done with Harry Potter although this will not likely happen as its such a niche audience.
Another major coincidence with Harry Potter and this one is the ability of objects to take on powerful magical properties. As a plot device, a thought experiment and as a metaphor for technology this theme could and likely will continue to be explored and used further.