Revisiting the Classics I Never Visited in The First Place by Katie Sluiter

It is my great pleasure to host another blog written by Katie Sluiter. She is a middle grades teacher who has written on some interesting topics in the past. She tackles questions that come up all of the time. She has talked about the role of YA books in the middle grades classroom here. Later, she discussed the possibility and value of author visits here. These were certainly ideas that held questions that the students in my YA class wanted answered. They are both worth reading for the first time or revisiting. My YA class had several nontraditional students and they began reading some of the books  with their own adolescent children. They had interesting conversations.  I think parents reading with their children is a topic worthy of more study. Well, lucky me, I follow Katie on Facebook and I check out her blog from time to time. As a result, I found out that she has been reading  with her children. Thus, we get the chance to hear how Katie is discovering some classics and reading with her kids.

Revisiting the Classics I Never Visited in The First Place by Katie Sluiter

The first Harry Potter book was published as I finished up my first year of undergrad studies. Even though the school district I graduated from generated some buzz because they banned it, I remained uninterested in reading about wizards and make believe. I was up to my armpits in methods courses and reading the “classics” in my pursuit of becoming an English teacher.

Last summer, Harry Potter celebrated twenty years in publication and many were shocked to find out that I, the “Book Lady”, had never read even one word of the series. What floored people more was that J.K. Rowling’s now legendary series was not the only children’s classic I had skipped over. Series like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys seemed old-fashioned even to a tween in the early 1990’s. I had never even read one of Roald Dahl’s books!

I admit that even when I began growing my classroom library four years ago and voraciously reading Young Adult Literature, I still didn’t read the books I knew were incredibly popular, choosing instead to read the newest releases. My focus was always on what I could recommend and book talk to my middle school students since my own children couldn’t read yet.

But over the past couple years, that has changed. I now have a 3rd grader (Eddie) and a Kindergartener (Charlie) living in my house--both who love to be read to at bedtime and are hungry for more than picture books. In a second chance-style twist of fate, Eddie asked me about Harry Potter, so I bought the books secondhand and this past summer, we started reading The Sorcerer's Stone together before I tucked him and his brother in for the night.

We read a half a chapter per night, with my promise that I won’t take the book upstairs to read ahead. After each book, we have a little movie party with popcorn and the anticipation of what will be the same, and what will be left out (because, as Eddie tells me, “they can’t put everything in the movies. They take all DAY to watch!”). I have quickly fallen in love with this magical school and all its characters, as have my boys. We have each been sorted into our House via Pottermore (Eddie is Hufflepuff, Charlie is Gryffindor, and I am Ravenclaw, by the way), and Eddie was even Harry himself for Halloween and continues to collect Harry Potter swag.

Part of me regrets not reading them when they came out, but I’m not sure I would have enjoyed them as much without my sons’ commentary during and after our reading. From time to time I will post our conversations on Facebook and the response I get is enormous. People love reliving their favorite series as we experience it the first time. They bite their tongues as we wonder about Tom Riddle and Sirius Black. One friend even pointed out that she and her daughter read my updates together because “it’s like watching someone open a gift you know they are going to just love.”
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Eddie, Charlie, and I are currently reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but another set of books I never read as a child has made a comeback in our life as well: C.S. Lewis’s ​Chronicles of Narnia. I’ve had the books on our shelves forever, but like Harry Potter, had no interest in the fantasy world on Narnia. While my husband is the one reading through this series with the boys, it doesn’t mean I don’t hear about it! Eddie and Charlie love to tell me what is going on, and even encourage me to read the books too, so I can join the discussion.

Since realizing that my children are my second chance at the middle grade and YA books I skipped over or missed out on, the boys and I have read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (I had only ever seen the movies and the stage show!), The Mouse and The Motorcycle, and many of the Magic Tree House series.

On our To Read pile are: the rest of the Harry Potter books, the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner, Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan, and Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell.

Similarly, having my own kids at the same age I was when I fell in love with books has meant falling back in love with classics such as Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls, Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, Socks by Beverly Cleary, and Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne.