alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (USS Enterprise Lightning)
alfreda89 ([personal profile] alfreda89) wrote2011-07-07 08:56 am

Oh Good God

Originally posted by [livejournal.com profile] madrobins at Oh Good God
Roger Ebert blogs this morning on a new "middle school" edition of The Great Gatsby. From the few snatches of the "retelling," I suspect that Classics Illustrated would have done a better job (they at least tended to throw in actual lines from the work in question). I don't have the same reverence for Gatsby that some folk have, but as Ebert says, the book is not so much the story as it is the telling of the story. Knock it down to the "see Jay run" level and you lose the point of reading the book. And this is being marketed to school as a book for HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS. At what point do they get to graduate to grownup books?

If you give a baby nothing but Pablum past a certain age, they not only don't develop a taste for anything with flavor--after a while they may not be able to eat anything else at all.

Edited to add: This edition is apparently meant for English-language learners. Frankly, if you're going to write a whole new book, make it a book that is its own self, and let the learner aspire to read Gatsby when she's mastered the new book.

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It's not quite as crazy-inducing to know that the books are written for ESL, but I remember writer Patricia C. Wrede teaching ESL years ago. Long before Shrek she was using Talking With Dragons, and getting very good results. Why not use a novel written at a certain reading level? Especially with good YA books on every topic out there?