I've not read any of that stuff. But I do remember it took me a lot of Nancy Drew books to learn it was always the caretaker with the weird accent.She had me going for the longest time. As I'm writing this book now, I'm sad that I've strayed away from writing that allows me to villainize caretakers with funky accents...it would make my "job" so much easier.(Although I could have a little fun with that...make one of the attendants foreign in some way, just for the "Psych!" red-herringness of it.)

I'm sad that I've strayed away from writing that allows me to villainize

"It's the sullen guy with the wooden leg! Turn around already before he hits you in the head with the shove!"

Darn the modern requirements for plausability. It would have worked if it weren't for those rotten kids and their dog.

Okay, yeah, I think I've still got your meaning all wrong. I'll stop now. Sorry I got so defensive. I understand you have no opinions on the authors.

Why can't one have reasons at a young age?

Of course we have reasons at a young age. I can't imagine anyone with a heart or soul NOT having the reasons. What I am having difficulty believing is the concept of almost any ten year old, new to the wonders of being allowed to read whatever they want, greedy to gobble down stories and feeling their minds and their spirits expand, having the connective skills or, honestly, the inclination, to track down some sort of justification for whatever the initial reaction might be.

Why can't a kid say, "Mom, I like this book better because it has aliens and this one has no aliens"? Or, "Mom, I like this book better because this other one was boring and I wanted to watch TV instead"?

I've never met a kid who didn't do exactly that, and that's speaking as a parent of a very precocious kid who had a shitload of friends over, most of the time.

It feels like you're dismissing the existence of any thought processes at all in children until what, age twenty?

Whatever the age is when any given human being starts feeling a deeper need to justify the first hit of pleasure they get, whether it's physical or cerebral. No specific age. However, the number of people I've met who fall into that category at age ten or twelve is - huh. Zero.

When do you think we know why we think something is better?

See above; when you hit the age, emotionally, spiritually, whatever, to ask yourself that question. I think - lest I apparently devolve into Martian again -that anyone with a heart or mind does exactly what you're talking about. And there is a big difference in the culmination of the thought processes, between the one that starts "This one's less boring, Mommy!" and the one that begins "It has to do with the quality of his research - his take on (insert whatever) is poorly thought out and relies on surface shock value." If you did the latter at ten, more power to you.

I'm sorry is I'm misinterpreting your stance, but yes, it is frustrating when your judgment of something is dismissed as, "Oh, you just liked him cause he had Indian things."

Um, P-C? YOU responded that way. I've never read the books, remember? I had no idea there were Indian themes in there. YOU told me that - and, in your original post about, it was the only completgely short-form (and therefore believably initial, or younger) reaction I saw.

Wrod, Connie.And I'm all in love with that urban drama thing so I totally can't do that. Like the Homicide detectives wishing they could pin their murders on Professor "Murray" from Sherlock Holmes.

Speaking of Holmes, the BBC commissioned 5 stories in celebration of the Great Detective.

[link]

Put bluntly, I'm having some difficulty in believing that all you guys were little critical geniuses at age ten

I know I wasn't, but I also know I could feel--viscerally--the difference between a good book and a bad book. I knew Sendack was more fun to read than the cheap (though more brightly colored and shinier) books at the grocery news stand. I have huge respect for kids' taste and I think they are even LESS swayed by "crit" mind than adults are. A kid likes a book because they like it, not because it won a Caldecott. Classics of children's literature become that way because kids respond to them over and over.

I was very surprised on scoping out books that stayed with me--that I remembered and missed from my childhood--on the internet, that so many of them were classics and written by excellent authors. They stayed with me (as opposed to the other bookjs of the dozen or so I gobbled down a week) because they were good. That's why the authors were well-regarded, because they wrote books which could do that. I may not have known WHY I responded to them, I just knew I did.

On the subject of grade two teachers: I might be the exception that proves the rule: I had a fabulous one. Mme Porteous was the first teacher that encouraged me to write, non-stop in fact. Of course all the stories were Garfield, My Little Pony and Jem crossovers with basically the same plot (all three groups meet on a cruise which gets hijacked by pirates and oh Synergy saves the day!) but my teacher accepted every one of them, corrected the grammar, wrote comments and handed them back within a day or two with a big ass sticker on the back. That's dedication.

My second grade teacher also rocked.

Oh, so sleepy and so sick of working today.

Mr. Salt was second grade. He was fantastic.

ETA: Oh, huh. Thought I was in Natter. My lurking ways have been exposed! Well. Carry on.