22 October 2006

Subversive Children's Lit Week!

I am proud to announce that this week is Dan's Official Subversive Children's Literature Week (not to be confused with National Subversive Children's Lit Week, the existence of which I'm too lazy to confirm by googling it).

Here's how it works - acquire some subversive children's literature (see the list below for examples) and make it available to children of your choosing. For maximum benefit, you might want to consider donating it to a library (school, public, etc), but this is also a good time to do some early Christmas shopping for the kids on your list. It's really that simple, and I hope you'll really do it (and at these prices, maybe even buy more than one)!

Some books you might want to consider (complete with links to Amazon's page):

The War Between The Pitiful Teachers and Splendid Kids, by Stanley Kiesel. $3.45 used at Amazon

Frindle, by Andrew Clements. $0.83 used at Amazon.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain. $1.38 used at Amazon

The Wonderful Flight To The Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor Cameron. $0.49 used at Amazon

The White Mountains, by John Christopher. $1.69 used at Amazon

And of course, I'll include Meet The Boomer Sisters, by yours truly. Sadly, it's not available on the used market yet, but for this week, I'm marking it down from $13.95 to $11.95.

One or two of you might be asking "What's so subversive about these books? And what's so great about subversive literature?" I'm glad you asked. These books are all designed to make people think. They encourage questioning of the status quo. They are great stories, well told, of people who dare to be themselves and who help other people on the journey. They are full of love, self-sacrifice, creativity and imagination. They do wonderful things to people who read them.

Tell a friend... (and leave a comment!)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Dan: great books and I highly recommend two of them (Tom Sawyer, and the Boomer Sisters), because I've read them both more than once......good luck.....Dad

Anonymous said...

You go Dan! I've never thought of questioning the status quo and daring to be yourself as subversive - just expected behavior. I must have read too much Tom and Huck as a kid.

Anonymous said...

Blaine - if more people read this stuff when they were kids, then perhaps more would see originality, courage & imagination as expected behavior rather than subversive... :)

Mark said...

Speaking of Boomer Sisters topics.. have you heard about the recent controversy at a school in Attleboro, MA? The principle has banned playground "chasing games" (i.e. tag) because that is a time kids could get hurt. One parent was quoted as having personally witnessed several "near collisions". Congratulations to this brilliant educator who will stop at nothing to keep kids safe - I expect her next step will be to ban asking students to answer questions in class, because that is a time kids could be "wrong" and damaged emotionally.
What was that quote about the most dangerous thing is to be alive?

Dan said...

I did hear about that - sounds like they could use a donation of some subversive books!

Steve Sherlock said...

One other author I'll throw in the mix is Phillip Pullman. He did a triology "His Dark Materials" (being made into a movie or so we hear). His lead character was a girl. He also did a series of detective novels with a teenage girl heroine in Sherlock Holmes times. My daughters loved them.

Anonymous said...

Good recommendations - I actually just finished the Dark Materials trilogy myself, and really enjoyed then!