Blog #8

Discuss the reason(s) you chose the book that will become the topic of your third essay. Did you choose it for the story? the illustrations? the controversial topic it covers? Is it a book that you can relate to on a personal level or one that you think would be helpful to someone that you know?

I chose the book The Five Chinese Brothers, becuase it's a book that I remember reading when I was young, and I actually have recently read it to my class of 1st graders (who really enjoyed it). The way they present the characters and the talk of death make it a controversial book. It isn't one that I can relate to on a personal level, but I was interested in taking a closer look at it.

Blog #6

Write about your first impression of what you've read so far in What Johnny Shouldn't Read. Are you surprised, shocked, horrified, intrigued, disgusted, or some other adjective, by it?

So far, I'm basically disgusted with how ridiculous these parents are. They are isolating thier kids from thier peers, and depriving them of valuable instruction time. By having them read separate material from the rest of the class, they are having their kids "teach themselves", if that. I would hate to be a teacher for one of these kids, and I'm definetely not looking forward to the situations I will be in with parents like this in the future. It puts extra stress on the teachers to be constantly worrying about what they can and can't subject these few kids to. Ridiculous. I would say the parents should just pull them out of school and homeschool them, but they would just brainwash their kids too much, and it would be more damaging to our society in the long run.