Books, Game Boys, and the Car
Not for the first time, my husband and I have a parenting disagreement. When we go on long trips, I would like the kids to have a portable DVD player to watch movies and my husband says that the kids do not need it because he survived as a child without it. Really? I could go on a long tirade about all of the things our kids have that he didn’t, but for the integrity of my marriage, I try to find a compromise.
His protest has forced me to examine what exactly we are going to do on those five to eight hour car trips that we take every summer. I, also, want to have my children learn new things and not be “plugged” into something 24/7. My boys have Game Boys and are heavily addicted to them. But I asked myself: what is the difference between zoning out on a movie versus a game? Not much. One point for the wife.
I do like that my children read; however, in order to get them to read, it requires a little prompting. So on one summer vacation, we were going to Itasca State Park in Itasca, Minnesota for camping. This is a four hour drive. So, I told the boys that they could play their gameboys, but they would have to read first. Here’s the stickler, they could play the Game Boy for as long as they read. So if they read for two hours, then they could play the Game Boy for two hours. I figured I was giving them autonomy by letting them decide how much time they would spend. I have triplet step-sons and here is how it panned out: one read for only 30 minutes (though he declared at the start that he was going to read for eight hours), one read for a couple of hours and the other completely forgot about the Game Boy and read the entire time. If there are three possible outcomes, my kids will fit into all three.
Overall, we had a great experience. The kids were ten years old at the time and it really fit their age. They boys were well-behaved, the car was quiet and I felt like they were doing something really productive. My husband was happy because they didn’t have DVD players (granted the Game Boy was a compromise on our part). What I mostly liked about this trip was that the boys got to decide what they were going to do. We set the rules and they navigated their way through them. I loved seeing their noses in books and I think they actually enjoyed themselves. I, also, got to read a book as well and my husband listened to his “talk” radio. We were all happy…for one brief four trip in the car.
Need some ideas for books? Try these.
Ages 4 – 8
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
From Publishers Weekly
Just in time for gift-giving season, the two hardcover staples for every nursery Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, illus. by Clement Hurd are now available in a handsome fabric-covered shrink-wrapped cardboard sleeve as A Margaret Wise Brown Gift Set. In addition, an oversize board book edition of Goodnight Moon makes the great green room larger than ever, allowing readers to trace with ease the tiny mouse that appears in each spread. (Sept.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ages 9-12
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
From Publishers Weekly
British novelist Gaiman (American Gods; Stardust) and his long-time accomplice McKean (collaborators on a number of Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels as well as The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2 Goldfish) spin an electrifyingly creepy tale likely to haunt young readers for many moons. After Coraline and her parents move into an old house, Coraline asks her mother about a mysterious locked door. Her mother unlocks it to reveal that it leads nowhere: “When they turned the house into flats, they simply bricked it up,” her mother explains. But something about the door attracts the girl, and when she later unlocks it herself, the bricks have disappeared. Through the door, she travels a dark corridor (which smells “like something very old and very slow”) into a world that eerily mimics her own, but with sinister differences. “I’m your other mother,” announces a woman who looks like Coraline’s mother, except “her eyes were big black buttons.” Coraline eventually makes it back to her real home only to find that her parents are missing–they’re trapped in the shadowy other world, of course, and it’s up to their scrappy daughter to save them. Gaiman twines his taut tale with a menacing tone and crisp prose fraught with memorable imagery (“Her other mother’s hand scuttled off Coraline’s shoulder like a frightened spider”), yet keeps the narrative just this side of terrifying. The imagery adds layers of psychological complexity (the button eyes of the characters in the other world vs. the heroine’s increasing ability to distinguish between what is real and what is not; elements of Coraline’s dreams that inform her waking decisions). McKean’s scratchy, angular drawings, reminiscent of Victorian etchings, add an ominous edge that helps ensure this book will be a real bedtime-buster. Ages 8-up.
Young Adult
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 9 Up–Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
What ideas do you have for entertaining children in the car?
