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Thoreau for middle schoolers?


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Thoreau is my favorite author.  It would seem like that should make it easy for me to choose some material to read with my daughter this year, but it's actually the opposite.  I know some people hate his work, and students often hate it when introduced to it in the wrong way.   But since I love his writing, it's hard for me to distinguish between the passages that other people may like and those they hate.

 

 

So, can anyone help me out here?  Which of his works (or chapters/portions) would you introduce first to an 8th grader?  

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This isn't exactly what you are looking for, but I'm planning to introduce him to my 6th grader this year with a biography (Into the Deep Forest with Henry David Thoreau). We will be reading it as part of our required state study (Maine), as well as visiting Walden Pond (even though that's in a different state! It still counts, right? Ha ha). I'm imagining we will read a bit of his writing as well, but I'm hoping by giving DS context about who he was and how he experienced our area, it will give deeper meaning--or at least a little bit of interest--when his longer works come up in later years.

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I have no BTDT parenting advice... but I read "Walden" and "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" and wrote a ~15p term paper on Thoreau as a 7th grader in the mid-80's... It is certainly accessible at that age, if somewhat old fashioned. In many ways transcendentalism is very well suited to the emerging idealism of middle school kids.

 

Good Luck.

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Civil Disobedience has been a good one to take sections of with my son.  He became seriously involved in environmentalism over the last couple years, so it was fitting.  It is a good one to talk about when to take a stand, how to take a stand, and why it is important to draw your lines before you find yourself overwhelmed emotionally.

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A really out of the box idea -- try reading the book Diamond in the Window (Jane Langton) -- and possibly the sequel The Astonishing Stereoscope (book 3), or The Swing in the Summerhouse (book 2) -- first. All three are fast reads; they are "magic adventure" books, with one character very much expressing ideas by, and quoting, Thoreau and Emerson -- in book 1 there is one magic adventure set at Walden with Thoreau. I'm trying to remember how much/little Thoreau is mentioned in books 2 or 3… 

 

Anyways, from there, you may find DD connects with one of the ideas that Thoreau writes about, which might help you see where to go next, directly into Thoreau's own writings.

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Lori, do you know of anywhere that has these books in print ?  I am now desperate to get my hands on them and read them to ds.

 

 

Alas, only appears to be available used through the usual booksellers:

- Amazon.com (used, all 3, for $.01 - $5 per book + shipping)

- Abe.com (used; only book #1, + shipping)

- Alibris.com (used; all 3, each about $1 + shipping)

 

Different sellers do sell internationally -- it's just that the shipping can really mount up. :(

 

 

There are more in the series, but I understand that the writing quality goes down after book 3, and that there is a disturbing event (death of a child?) in a later book -- I think The Fledging -- and is a change in tone and purpose from the earlier books.

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