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Animal Farm for Children?
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From: skold7 at juno.com <skold7>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 10:57:31 -0800
I found this suggestion compelling, and wonder if anyone has experience with presenting Orwell's Animal Farm to elementary school readers? And what you think of the arguments if you haven't considered this as a good reading choice?
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From the essay "Remembering Orwell's 'Animal Farm'" By Eli Lehrer frontpagemag.com | January 22, 2003
....Animal Farm, on the other hand, gets assigned to many students around the same time when it?s quite an easy read. It should be assigned much earlier: The beast?ble retelling of the Russian Revolution is, in fact, a nearly perfect book for beginning readers. In fact, its reading level, content, and style make it a perfect book to assign to beginning readers as young as the second or third grade. Among well-remembered novels, it?s quite easy to read: its 4.1 score on the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level scale, the standard measure of reading difficulty, compares favorably to E.B. White?s Trumpet of the Swan (3.5) and proves a good deal easier than the more recent Harry Potter books (about 7th grade level) or a typical newspaper article (5th or 6th grade level). If an author known for producing children?s book?s had written it, it would almost certainly be found in the children?s literature section of bookstores today.
...As it is, bright second graders can actually understand it. (I should know, that?s when I first read it.) It offers simple, vividly drawn characters, a fast moving plot and lots of catch phrases (four legs good, two legs bad!) children have already heard. As a beast fable it presents a narrative form kids already know. Content-wise, Animal Farm conveys valuable moral lessons: While it?s explicitly an allegory of the Russian revolution, it makes the more significant point that unmonitored authority, wielded by the pigs in the novel and many governments, labor unions, corporations in real life, tends to corrupt no matter how idealistic its aims first appear. The novel, while not explicitly conservative or liberal--Orwell, after all, was a socialist who hated totalitarianism of all stripes--dwells on the inevitable failure of massive collectivist schemes. There?s some violence, it?s true, but nearly all of it is directed at animals and, in any case, there?s far less than one tends to find on prime-time television all children. Like most of Orwell?s writing and unlike the "See Dick Run" readers many children begin with, it?s also a model of good English prose that even college English professors can grudgingly appreciate. It?s a real work of literature that deserves a place much earlier on in the school system.
Received on Wed 19 Feb 2003 12:57:31 PM CST
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 10:57:31 -0800
I found this suggestion compelling, and wonder if anyone has experience with presenting Orwell's Animal Farm to elementary school readers? And what you think of the arguments if you haven't considered this as a good reading choice?
_at_@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
From the essay "Remembering Orwell's 'Animal Farm'" By Eli Lehrer frontpagemag.com | January 22, 2003
....Animal Farm, on the other hand, gets assigned to many students around the same time when it?s quite an easy read. It should be assigned much earlier: The beast?ble retelling of the Russian Revolution is, in fact, a nearly perfect book for beginning readers. In fact, its reading level, content, and style make it a perfect book to assign to beginning readers as young as the second or third grade. Among well-remembered novels, it?s quite easy to read: its 4.1 score on the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level scale, the standard measure of reading difficulty, compares favorably to E.B. White?s Trumpet of the Swan (3.5) and proves a good deal easier than the more recent Harry Potter books (about 7th grade level) or a typical newspaper article (5th or 6th grade level). If an author known for producing children?s book?s had written it, it would almost certainly be found in the children?s literature section of bookstores today.
...As it is, bright second graders can actually understand it. (I should know, that?s when I first read it.) It offers simple, vividly drawn characters, a fast moving plot and lots of catch phrases (four legs good, two legs bad!) children have already heard. As a beast fable it presents a narrative form kids already know. Content-wise, Animal Farm conveys valuable moral lessons: While it?s explicitly an allegory of the Russian revolution, it makes the more significant point that unmonitored authority, wielded by the pigs in the novel and many governments, labor unions, corporations in real life, tends to corrupt no matter how idealistic its aims first appear. The novel, while not explicitly conservative or liberal--Orwell, after all, was a socialist who hated totalitarianism of all stripes--dwells on the inevitable failure of massive collectivist schemes. There?s some violence, it?s true, but nearly all of it is directed at animals and, in any case, there?s far less than one tends to find on prime-time television all children. Like most of Orwell?s writing and unlike the "See Dick Run" readers many children begin with, it?s also a model of good English prose that even college English professors can grudgingly appreciate. It?s a real work of literature that deserves a place much earlier on in the school system.
Received on Wed 19 Feb 2003 12:57:31 PM CST
