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360 Book Recommendations for Grade School Kids

psikeyhackr

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How did I come up with 360?

10 for 1st grade, 20 for 2nd grade, ... 80 for 8th grade.

My mother taught me to read when I was 3 years old but did not suggest any books thru elementary school. I suppose it says something about how peculiar children are that I did not regard that as weird at the time.

Looking back it is like, ETC!

So putting up with nuns teaching the class to read was Really BORING! I remember trying not cry getting ready for school in 3rd grade.
THERE IS NO ESCAPE!!!

Now the world is even more weird. We can give grade school kids computers more powerful than a machine that cost $3,000,000 in 1980.

An IBM 3033 mainframe with 8 MB of memory!

Who would buy a computer with 8 megabytes?
Couldn't even load Linux much less Windows.

But now kids can download free books to there color tablets. IBM had color monitors for mainframes in 1980. Almost nobody bought them.

So what do we SUGGEST for the little monsters?

Black Beauty (1877) by Anna Sewell

The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame

The Boxcar Children (1924) by Gertrude Chandler Warner

David and the Phoenix (1957) by Edward Ormondroyd

The Fourth R (1959) by George O. Smith

There is Librivox for public domain audiobooks.

How can we expect kids to read in high school if reading was a total bummer in grade school.
 
How did I come up with 360?

10 for 1st grade, 20 for 2nd grade, ... 80 for 8th grade.

My mother taught me to read when I was 3 years old but did not suggest any books thru elementary school. I suppose it says something about how peculiar children are that I did not regard that as weird at the time.

Looking back it is like, ETC!

So putting up with nuns teaching the class to read was Really BORING! I remember trying not cry getting ready for school in 3rd grade.
THERE IS NO ESCAPE!!!

Now the world is even more weird. We can give grade school kids computers more powerful than a machine that cost $3,000,000 in 1980.

An IBM 3033 mainframe with 8 MB of memory!

Who would buy a computer with 8 megabytes?
Couldn't even load Linux much less Windows.

But now kids can download free books to there color tablets. IBM had color monitors for mainframes in 1980. Almost nobody bought them.

So what do we SUGGEST for the little monsters?

Black Beauty (1877) by Anna Sewell

The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame

The Boxcar Children (1924) by Gertrude Chandler Warner

David and the Phoenix (1957) by Edward Ormondroyd

The Fourth R (1959) by George O. Smith

There is Librivox for public domain audiobooks.

How can we expect kids to read in high school if reading was a total bummer in grade school.
Good ones!
I loved Harriet the Spy and A Wrinkle in Time, too.. Not on Gutenberg, but you can find them in libraries, still.

Black Beauty...I remember reading that on a long car trip. I remember close to the end I was sobbing, too blinded by tears to keep reading and my mother looking over the front seat at me and commanding KEEP READING!!! LOL
 
I didn't read Black Beauty as a kid. I listened to the Librivox version a number of years ago.

It is promoted as a kid's book but there is more to it than that. It is kind of historical providing a perspective on Victorian England. And much of the cruelty to animals is the result economic cruelty to humans. It would be really cool if Karl Marx had read it and written a review.

Books should be multifunctional.
 
Looking back it is like, ETC!

That was supposed to be:

Looking back it is like, WTF!

Stupid smartphones aren't smart enough.
 
I didn't read Black Beauty as a kid. I listened to the Librivox version a number of years ago.

It is promoted as a kid's book but there is more to it than that. It is kind of historical providing a perspective on Victorian England. And much of the cruelty to animals is the result economic cruelty to humans. It would be really cool if Karl Marx had read it and written a review.

Books should be multifunctional.
Books should be fun, exciting, moving. Then kids will want to open the next one. Learning about history and different perspectives is the quiet part of a good book. It's absorbed without trying.
 
It's absorbed without trying.
Totally agree! You end up knowing things you didn't know you knew and years later you go, "Oh yeah, I know about that from...."

It amazes me that there are so many discussions about education and so little mention of curiosity and fun.



Harvard graduates could not explain what caused winter and summer.

A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke

Orbital mechanics.
 
Totally agree! You end up knowing things you didn't know you knew and years later you go, "Oh yeah, I know about that from...."

It amazes me that there are so many discussions about education and so little mention of curiosity and fun.



Harvard graduates could not explain what caused winter and summer.

A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C Clarke

Orbital mechanics.

I watched the vid. I had to google what causes the phases of the moon. Got me!
 
I watched the vid. I had to google what causes the phases of the moon. Got me!
It won't help you get a job so it is academically irrelevant. But reading science fiction at an early age affected my perspective of the universe. I am pretty sure A Fall of Moondust was kind of a crux book for me that made me decide on engineering in 7th grade. Certainly no adult suggested it.

I just can't help but find it shocking when 20 year olds have no idea what they want to do. And we have had cheap computers for more than a decade.



There is just so much stuff. I wouldn't learn music in grade school because I would not stay after school with those nuns for ANYTHING!
 
All Day September (1959) by Roger Kuykendall

The Servant Problem (1962) by Robert Franklin Young

Cat and Mouse (1959) by Ralph Williams

These are three different kinds of science fiction. All Day September is similar to Clarke's A Fall of Moondust, hard SF in danger on the Moon, the characterization isn't very good though.

The Servant Problem & Cat and Mouse have aliens and stargates that go beyond mundane SF limited to the solar system.

Kids will be stuck on the planet for a few decades yet but they need to cope with the traditional power structures in the war for the future.
 
"Cat and Mouse," was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story award in 1960. The novelette follows the protagonist Ed Brown in Alaska as he discovers an alternate alien civilization in the wooded mountains.

Lost to Flowers for Algernon from which the movie Charly was made, starring Cliff Robertson.
 
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Possibly the most famous relatively modern science fiction story in the public domain:

Deathworld, by Harry Harrison

Deathworld II (The Ethical Engineer) (1964) by Harry Harrison


Frankenstein and The Time Machine are more famous and in Project Gutenberg but they certainly are not modern.

No suggestions from anyone?
 
I would have loved something like this in 7th grade:

Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics (2006) by Stan Gibilisco

EveryCircuit by Igor Vytyaz
 
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