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the complaint from my students is not that TI or TH are childish -- we spent a week on Where the Wild Things Are and had wonderful time with that -- but very cleary and specifically centred on the fact that it's about boys.
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So
Treasure Island and
The Hobbit are "very clearly and specifically centered" on boys, but
Where the Wild Things Are isn't? I wonder how Max feels about this...
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This is why they like to hear the same stories read to them over and over again.
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And in all honesty I'm not sure how I feel about this one... sure when I was really little (little enough that I now can't remember it) I probably enjoyed hearing the same thing over and over, but at about the point where I begin to remember things I always wanted to hear something new. That's my first recollection of
The Hobbit actually, going up to my dad when he was reading it and asking "what's that?", "what's it about?" and a whole string of questions ending with "read it to me". Since I had no earlier memory of it the book was something completely new and therefore worth hearing, and after he finished reading it to me that time he mentioned that there was a series of books which came after it (LOTR) so I made him read those to me. I was maybe 6 at that point, I got scared well before the end but I'd wanted to hear them because they were something new. I guess I could have said that shortly by saying that I think by the time kids are old enough to be really interested in books like
The Hobbit they're also probably into the stage where they're looking for something new, which is probably why so many books for that age group are adventure style stories...
As for your lists of questions, I guess it depends on how you're looking at it.
To use the last question, "is it not too much to ask that each group pay attention to the stories of the other?", as an example. Children probably don't notice, the general consensus here is that when we were 5 or 7 or what have you it didn't matter that
The Hobbit had no girls. Now though, it might. If I were reading of Bilbo's adventures for the first time this year it may really irk me that there are no girls in the book.
EDIT: And what exactly do you mean by "memory games"?