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I’ve gotten on my soapbox before about how high school English ruins reading for kids. And be forewarned, here we go again. But before I begin, I just want you to read this:
“This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but that they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pigmies while you were looking the other way.”
I have one question. How the HELL does anyone expect a 16-year-old to understand that?
The fact is, course, that they can’t. They’re sixteen, mere emotional fetuses. They read John Knowles beautiful words, but they don’t digest them. They hear but they don’t listen (isn’t that typical teenager behavior?). They don’t get what this book is really about, which is deeply sad, because there is so, so much to “get.”
I know this, because I was asked to read this book when I was sixteen and I even I, a practically professional reader, almost forgot about the third protagonist – the war. What I remember most was wondering idly which of the boys I would have liked to date (Finny of course!). In that way I am (or rather, as I like to think, was) no better than the scads of Twi-hards in their Team Jacob and Team Edward tshirts.
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