Thaddeus, I loved reading " A New Classic...etc." First of all, I love reading about my favorite writers and their opinions. There is the joy of both agreement and disagreement. It's interesting that someone as bright as Hemingway fails to acknowledge L. Frank Baum's THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ as being one of the great American novels an…
Thaddeus, I loved reading " A New Classic...etc." First of all, I love reading about my favorite writers and their opinions. There is the joy of both agreement and disagreement. It's interesting that someone as bright as Hemingway fails to acknowledge L. Frank Baum's THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ as being one of the great American novels and came well before HUCKLEBERRY FINN. It's the first American 'fairy tale,' the first children's book to quote particularly American epithets like "There's No Place Like Home." It's also the first American book a hero, Dorothy Gale, that takes the trip, and does all the things, that the classic hero does.
Huck takes the iconic trip down the Mississippi, but despite his actions towards Jim at the end (he's horrible to him in other parts of the book) he remains a boy of his time. As an educator, I've seen that high schools are dropping HUCKLEBERRY FINN, because it's impossible, and callous, to expose Black children to the language in the book or the way Jim is riduculed by Huck many times.
Thaddeus, I loved reading " A New Classic...etc." First of all, I love reading about my favorite writers and their opinions. There is the joy of both agreement and disagreement. It's interesting that someone as bright as Hemingway fails to acknowledge L. Frank Baum's THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ as being one of the great American novels and came well before HUCKLEBERRY FINN. It's the first American 'fairy tale,' the first children's book to quote particularly American epithets like "There's No Place Like Home." It's also the first American book a hero, Dorothy Gale, that takes the trip, and does all the things, that the classic hero does.
Huck takes the iconic trip down the Mississippi, but despite his actions towards Jim at the end (he's horrible to him in other parts of the book) he remains a boy of his time. As an educator, I've seen that high schools are dropping HUCKLEBERRY FINN, because it's impossible, and callous, to expose Black children to the language in the book or the way Jim is riduculed by Huck many times.
I love To Kill a Mockingbird, but it's run into similar problems.
Exactly, and it's hard to tell kids that the book represents a different time. They don't live in any time but the present.