The Books Our Children Read
By Kathryn H. Kidd

Welcome to the Christmas season, friends and neighbors! I hope this Christmas is a time of joy and happiness for all of you.

Even though our topic about opening our homes to others during the holiday season never caught fire, I did get one more letter this past week. Thanksgiving may have passed, but it's not too late to help others at Christmastime. In that respect, here is our reader's suggestion. Afterwards we'll go on to our shiny new topic.

A former Midwesterner, Jackie, writes:

I'm sorry now that I didn't write sooner. I just figured you'd get your usual landslide of responses to your warm fuzzy holiday topic and didn't think I had all that much to offer. Reading the responses you did get (bless 'em!), I realized that what has been working for us for the past several years really has made a huge difference in our family and thought it was worth mentioning, even if it is a bit late.

We are a small family (only one child still at home) living until last April in the midwest, away from any other family members. Because of that, Thanksgiving has been a little sad for us. When my mother-in-law was alive she sometimes visited during the Thanksgiving holiday, but after her death it was a little difficult to feel like a Thanksgiving dinner with our little family of three people was anything special or memorable. We did what we could to invite "strays" and sometimes those dinners were successful, but often we found that the "strays" had been included in other people's plans or they had banded together to make their own, which was the genesis for our own plan.

We contacted some other families that were in similar situations; no family in the area with kids in roughly the same age range as our son. Unbelievably, there were four of them! They were struggling the same way our family was, though of course no one ever talked about having a difficult holiday.

We banded together and had a potluck Thanksgiving dinner together, each family bringing their own special traditions together to share. I made my great-grandmother's hot crab and shrimp appetizer and served it on the shells that she passed down to me, and it was fun to bring that tradition to others. Our collective kids, previously "alone" during the holiday, had a great time at the kids' table that would have been their lot if they were part of a large family group.

At the end of it all, we cleaned up whoever's kitchen we ended up using that year, split up the leftovers (everyone brought their own storage containers) and drove home. We added families and continue to include "strays" in our plans because of how much they add to our group. It has been so much fun that even though we have moved closer to family and will be able to happily spend time with grandchildren this year, I've been feeling that I would really miss all the fun back in our friends' dining room in the midwest!

I don't know if this will really help you or your readers (especially since you're moving on to another topic!), but I just wanted to mention it because sometimes with all the concern for "needy" people we forget other families who seem to have everything but who are pretty lonely during the big-family holidays. I know it really helped our son (who was about 8 years old when we started this tradition) and we are happy to have this rich tradition in our store of "family" memories!

Thanks for the forum,

Jackie

What a nifty idea, Jackie! I'll bet there are two dozen families in our ward that fall into that category, and they could make a whale of a party. I especially like the way you included your family traditions (such as the crab dip in the vintage crab shells). It would be terrific to see how others celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas by having a combined-tradition dinner. Thanks for writing.

Now we're on to today's new subject. Our topic comes from Hollie Parry, who writes our young adult book reviews section. She has a question pertaining to the books our children read. Parents — I hope you'll weigh in on this topic!

She writes:

I am taking a class on young adult literature in the schools, specifically reviewing the 2007 Approved Book List for Jordan School District in Utah. As I read one of the books on the list recently, I discovered that although the book was extremely well-written, it contained elements that would exclude it from my Meridian Magazine reviews — the Lord's name in vain, other objectionable language, and sexual content (although not explicit or detailed). But I still really, really liked the book as it was multi-cultural, honest, real, and the literary imagery was amazing!

As a parent, I was wondering how other LDS families deal with books that are on the junior high/high school booklists that contain themes like sex, rape, abuse, homosexuality, drugs, and so on. The teacher in the class gave these types of books a name "Edgy Books" and I wondered if that's really a genre. She also said that these types of books can be used in the classroom to teach empathy.

Another friend of mine (who is not LDS) talked to me about an edgy book that her daughter's teacher had for required reading in her Catholic school. When my friend questioned the teacher about the book the response she got was "These are the only books I can get my students to read." My friend confirmed that this edgy book was the one book that her reluctant reader daughter was interested in completing.

My main questions for the masses are:

• Is it okay for our youth to read books that are edgy?
• How much should we shelter our children from these themes in literature?
• Is there value in teens reading edgy themes, even when their family values don't match the values in the book?
• When there is a book that parents don't feel good about their teen reading, even as required reading for the a grade, how do they approach the teacher or schools?

I wasn't really thinking in turning this into a "book-burning/-bashing" discussion, but I was curious after your comments on the Stephenie Meyer books what the LDS population thinks on edgy teen books and how much exposure to this type of literature they think is appropriate.

Hollie

As Hollie's letter implies, I have some pretty strong feelings on this subject. But this column isn't about me — it's about you. What do you think about Hollie's questions?

With the Christmas season approaching, a lot of you are going to want to buy books for your preteens and your teenagers (or for nieces and nephews). This could be a timely topic for you.

So please send your thoughts to meridianmagazine@aol.com. Put something in the subject line that will let me know your letter isn't spam. And when you write, be sure to include your full name, city and state or province. (If you'd rather be semi-anonymous, sign your name as “A Reader from Michigan” or “Sandy from Timbuktu.” The important thing is that we hear from you.)

Until next time — Kathy

The books we read should be chosen with great care,
that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,
"The medicines of the soul."

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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