Dear Lorfink of Arabia,
Guess what I finished doing yesterday? Looking over Therese's notes for The Fifth Child! Now, to be clear before I start this rant, I don't mind helping Therese with her English homework/papers. And truthfully, she could probably get by just fine without my assistance. However, this novella was really awful, and it showed me some of the big problems with required summer reading. Possible spoilers below.
Number #1 reason to hate The Fifth Child: The corny jokes that got older than Steve. What's The Fifth Child about? Obviously Matthias, being the fifth child. I realize that Therese's classmates, for the most part, would be unaware of jokes like this, but thinking this made me cringe every time I opened the book.
Number #2 reason to hate The Fifth Child: How everyone in the book was completely unaware of the fact that the sixth child is the best one. I mean, if their fifth child was a goblin, their sixth would probably be an angel. Or at least a linebacker who could tackle and control the goblin child.
Number #3 reason to hate The Fifth Child: There is no way that a doctor would just be like "the kid's just hyperactive." If a baby born a month early was trying to stand at only a couple months old, I'm pretty sure the doctor would actually look into it.
Number #4 reason to hate The Fifth Child: Harriet and David strike me as very unlikely people to actually go through with having five children. They seem far more enraptured with the idea of this perfect family than with their actual kids, even before Ben comes in.
Number #5 reason to hate The Fifth Child: Ben comes off more as being autistic rather than a devil, goblin, or an alien. While his parents talk about how he isn't human, he still strikes me as very human, even if he can't act the way Harriet and David want him to.
That being said, I can undestand why Therese's English teacher wants them to read this book. There are some interesting themes going on here. However, I highly doubt that most of Therese's classmates are skilled enough readers to understand what's happening in this book. And that's the problem with summer reading. We expect these children to teach themselves these books to the level that they can write papers and take test on them in the beginning of the school year. It's setting them up for failure on the first day. Would this situation be improved if these children were reading books throughout the year on their own time? Definitely—they would have better reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. However, we don't live in that world, and even if we did, it still wouldn't make it fair that these children have to teach themselves these books.
Anyway, reading three books, none of which are over 300 pages, is a mere pittance. I could read that in less than a week. They would be better off reading ten books of their own choice (while meeting certain page length requirements; because we all know there would be at lest one who would pick picture books) and write a paper on them. It would make reading less of a chore, and hopefully would build the habit in them.
Although, what do I know? I haven't had any assigned summer reading since the fifth grade. Admittedly, I'm also not fond of the idea of abandoning the classics for their own pleasure, but I also don't like turning them off from the classics with a bad summer reading experience. There just has to be a better solution out there than what Therese is doing right now.
Signed a future English teacher who will never assign The Fifth Child,
Caitlin
