From: Monica Edinger <monicaedinger>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 06:06:34 -0500

I'm sorry to be sending this to the list on the very last day of the month, but the most recent posts have just begun to tap into the complexities of this topic and have gotten my brain juices flowing.

It seems to me that books involving faith, religion, god, and issues of the spirit are read like all books --- differently depending on personality, interest, experience and context. I first read the Narnia books as a child when I had minimal religious knowledge. I still have my much loved and battered read-over-and-over copies on my bookshelf. A little over a decade later, as a very young teacher, I read aloud and then taught The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and it was then, upon rereading them for the first time since childhood, that the religious elements became evident to me and I worried about bringing what now read like an overtly (so it seemed to me then in 1979) religious book into my secular classroom. However, the children
(whose religious background I did not know) did not seem to pay any more attention to it than I had as a child and I relaxed. I remember gingerly pointing it out to them (that is, Aslan- Christ) and they listening politely and showing absolutely no interest whatsoever. Today, I come to the books with a vast amount of experience and context and, as a result, have lost interest in them (to read aloud or teach) completely. However, that would never stop me from recommending them to children as I feel confident that they will enjoy them as I did when I did not have the baggage of experience that I now have.

Additionally, it seems to me there are so many different reasons for reading. Sometimes we read to learn. As a child I was absolutely riveted by A Nun's Story and read it more than once. I think it was my first exposure to any sort of religious ritual. Now I know that there are many from different faiths, but at the time this was the first I had ever encountered and it left an indelible impression in my mind. I have no doubt children read many of the books recommended simply to learn about lives and faiths far different from their own. When they express horror over what seems to them completely alien rituals I don't chastise them, but discuss it with them. I always need to remember that their personal experiences and contexts are not my own.

To me the best stories are those that can be read on multiple levels. I occasionally have precocious 4th grade readers who delve into His Dark Materials. But these children read for story-plot, to see what happens to Lyra. It isn't even that they don't notice the religious references (especially the death of the Authority:), it is just that it isn't of interest, just as it wasn't for me when I read Narnia so many years ago. Who knows --- perhaps they will return to the trilogy as young teachers, worry as I did, and then relax --- trusting in that the child readers will get just what they need --- reading pleasure.

Monica

Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at gmail.com
Received on Tue 30 Nov 2004 05:06:34 AM CST