Farrar Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 I refused to read Thomas. I have a thing about moralistic tales. Gag. Someone I knew was working briefly editing those character spinoff books. She did a bunch of Scooby Doo ones and was always complaining at how horrible they were. Not only the writing, but that they didn't get the Scooby characters right! But, see, sometimes the character books are actually good. The Monster at the End of This Book is a classic of picture books. And who else is addicted to the Gene Yang Avatar graphic novels. They're just as well done as the show and as Yang's Printz award style stuff. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 I felt this way about InkSpot, or InkBlot, or whatever the heck it was. I kept reading it, hoping it would get better, but it didnt.InkHeart? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 InkHeart? Yes! See, my mind has blocked it, lol. I wanted to love it, because I love that genre, and I read every.single.page. And it never got better. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanaqui Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 I refused to read Thomas. I have a thing about moralistic tales. Gag. Likewise. Yes! See, my mind has blocked it, lol. I wanted to love it, because I love that genre, and I read every.single.page. And it never got better. Some people blame Inkheart on the translation, rather than Funke. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samm Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Try the Captain Underpants series. Many are intentionally misspelled I think. I only looked through 1 or 2 C.U. examples. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Southern Ivy Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 I liked If you Give a Mouse a Cookie. It worked great to teach cause and effect in 1st grade. The subsequent "If you give" books? Poke my eyes out, please! They are horrible. I currently despise the Pinkalicious series. Dd loves it, but to me, it's the picture perfect definition of twaddle. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KarenC Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Another vote for Junie B. Jones and the Twilight series. Both are unbelievably horrible. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanaqui Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Wait, we were talking about Thomas the Tank Engine, right? I never read the original books, and now I wonder if I'm missing out! According to this analysis, Sodor is "the only safe zone in a totalitarian dystopia in which steam trains are routinely killed and their body parts are sold or cannibalized for repair." They can cite it, too. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mothersweets Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Gil, maybe this article might give you a few more ideas? The Poky Little Puppy and Other Awful Canonical Children's Books I know when I was a young parent I tried to read several of these 'classics' to my children and quickly realized how horrible the writing was. As far as chapter books, I'm agreeing with several pps who suggested any book that has been adapted from a movie or tv program. Those are generally awful. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluegoat Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Gil, maybe this article might give you a few more ideas? The Poky Little Puppy and Other Awful Canonical Children's Books I know when I was a young parent I tried to read several of these 'classics' to my children and quickly realized how horrible the writing was. As far as chapter books, I'm agreeing with several pps who suggested any book that has been adapted from a movie or tv program. Those are generally awful. I am not sure The Poky Little Puppy is so much meant to be great lit as something people feel nostalgic about. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yvonne Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 (edited) Straw into Gold was SO bad that I cannot resist adding it to this thread. Supposedly the author also wrote two Newbery Honor books, but I suspect it was ghost written by some 8 year old instead. Read it aloud when my kids were younger and my daughter had to read it for a class. I don't know if I've read a worse, supposedly "classic" book. My kids don't have as bad a memory of it because mostly they remember all my "Who would ever say that? .... Does he think his readers are complete idiots that he _always_ has to explain some pithy comment after he says it? .... I can't believe this is supposed to be a good book" comments. I guess the silver lining was seeing how NOT to write. ETA: Strike that. There was NO silver lining to this book. LOL Edited February 1, 2016 by yvonne 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanaqui Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 Sounds a bit out of Schmidt's normal range - I mostly know him for his historical (and realistic!) work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jackie Posted February 1, 2016 Share Posted February 1, 2016 I'm sure it's heresy, but The Boxcar Children was miserable. We read it aloud and the sentences were choppy, the dialogue was awkward, and every character "laughed" every other line. The sequels aren't better. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daijobu Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 Why has no one mentioned all the picture books based on TV characters? Or updated versions of classics. There are newer Nancy Drew mysteries. My big complaint is that one of the detective trio is supposedly a computer expert. But her "expertise" stops just at being able to do a google search. The other 2 girls appear to be incapable of using the internet. So I guess she's the "computer expert." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 Likewise. Some people blame Inkheart on the translation, rather than Funke. Yeah, you really can't say a bad translation is the fault of the author. It might have been bad in the original... or it might just be a really bad translation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Incognito Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 I love weird books. Everyone go read a Moomins book, right now! Yeah, I love them. I tried to get my voracious reader to read one this week and it was rejected after one chapter and I was slightly offended! :) Although I haven't read the English translation, so maybe it isn't as good - I should see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 Yeah, you really can't say a bad translation is the fault of the author. It might have been bad in the original... or it might just be a really bad translation. Given that I've really loved everything else I've read by her but could barely stand Inkheart, when I read that it might be the translation, I felt like that made a ton of sense. Of course... Who knows... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerileanne99 Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 I love weird books. Everyone go read a Moomins book, right now! We are reading Finn Family Moomintroll right now! Totally weird...yet still well-written with gorgeous descriptive language:) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris in VA Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 Yes! See, my mind has blocked it, lol. I wanted to love it, because I love that genre, and I read every.single.page. And it never got better. Nooooo.... I thought I liked you. (Just kidding--but I love all 3 of these stories, because of what they say about responsibility of creator to creation, for one thing...) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 This one might prove what others are saying. I loved, loved, loved that book as a child. Just adored it. I was sooooo excited to read it to my kids. And when I read it aloud to them as an adult, I hated, hated, hated that book! But my kids loved it! A Wrinkle in Time does not read aloud well. I was very surprised about that when I discovered it. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pen Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 I recall taking issue with the writing in the Hank the Cowdog books. Ds loved them though. It has been several years and I cannot any longer recall what I had found objectionable. There have been other books that seemed badly written such that they were never finished. A series about wolves (fiction) that had seemed promising, but just was tedious. I agree that Magic Tree House and Divergent have writing issues, but they are, on the other hand,extremely, extremely helpful for newly minted or struggling readers at various stages, and so, like Hank the Cowdog which was highly entertaining, I am inclined to overlook the problems. Just plain dull and tedious, as with the wolf series, is harder IMO to excuse. Though then at a "higher" level dull and tedious somehow starts to be taken as a virtue as does some forms of educatorese and other _____ese gobbledygook that appear to be more than they are. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tress Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 (edited) I agree that Magic Tree House and Divergent have writing issues, but they are, on the other hand,extremely, extremely helpful for newly minted or struggling readers at various stages.Absolutely! If MTH is the example of bad writing in early reading books, wow, you sure do not want to read any Dutch books for emerging readers. My kids are extatic when they reach the level of English vocab needed to read MTH. Then reading starts to become fun. Dare I say it, I just ordered the first 20 MTH books *in French* from ebay. All those A0 and A1 level French readers (ERK language level) keep focussing on colours and days of the week....blech. With MTH you get to read about Vikings and Dolphins and the Rain Forest! (I wish MTH came in Latin and Greek, too.) Divergent, on the other hand, we'll skip :D. If you are ready to read at that level in a foreign language, there are plenty of other good books to chose from. Edited February 3, 2016 by Tress 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pen Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 Absolutely! If MTH is the example of bad writing in early reading books, wow, you sure do not want to read any Dutch books for emerging readers. My kids are extatic when they reach the level of English vocab needed to read MTH. Then reading starts to become fun. Dare I say it, I just ordered the first 20 MTH books *in French* from ebay. All those A0 and A1 level French readers (ERK language level) keep focussing on colours and days of the week....blech. With MTH you get to read about Vikings and Dolphins and the Rain Forest! (I wish MTH came in Latin and Greek, too.) . That sounds like a wonderful idea!!! I think it is "bad" writing only in the sense that it has a lot of sentences that are not technically correct. I think it is amazing writing in that the author could tell interesting stories, some with other content learning in them, as you say, with relatively simple to read language. I think they are excellent, but if Gil wants something like sentence grammar errors (often fragments) to correct that can be found in a real book, MTH might provide that. Do you happen to know what all languages they are available in--or more specifically whether they come in German and Spanish? We were looking for early readers for my ds to practice his foreign language and couldn't find anything good, but didn't think of trying MTH in translation. I am sure there are plenty he never read, or even if he did that trying it in another language would still be helpful. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Do you happen to know what all languages they are available in--or more specifically whether they come in German and Spanish? We were looking for early readers for my ds to practice his foreign language and couldn't find anything good, but didn't think of trying MTH in translation. I am sure there are plenty he never read, or even if he did that trying it in another language would still be helpful. They definitely come in German. My dds read a bunch of them. I think they might actually be less painful to read in German, as I think the translation made for less sentence fragments. You can't truncate a German sentence in the middle, because often the verb is at the end... I don't think Germans are as obsessed with 5 word or less sentences for beginning readers... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dsbrack Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 I loved "The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks" when I was a kid but when I tried reading it aloud, I just couldn't get through it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tress Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 That sounds like a wonderful idea!!! I think it is "bad" writing only in the sense that it has a lot of sentences that are not technically correct. I think it is amazing writing in that the author could tell interesting stories, some with other content learning in them, as you say, with relatively simple to read language. I think they are excellent, but if Gil wants something like sentence grammar errors (often fragments) to correct that can be found in a real book, MTH might provide that. Do you happen to know what all languages they are available in--or more specifically whether they come in German and Spanish? We were looking for early readers for my ds to practice his foreign language and couldn't find anything good, but didn't think of trying MTH in translation. I am sure there are plenty he never read, or even if he did that trying it in another language would still be helpful. They are absolutely available in German and Spanish. German: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/3785537549?keywords=mary%20pope%20osborne%20das%20magische%20baumhaus&qid=1454563448&ref_=sr_1_5&sr=8-5 And Spanish: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A301731%2Cp_lbr_one_browse-bin%3AMary%20Pope%20Osborne My oldest daugter went from reading MTH to reading Enid Blyton (I know, also frowned upon here, but I needed a fun series) to Percy Jackson/Harry Potter and then could read whatever she wanted in English. My dd9 is at the Enid Blyton stage now, dd7 reads MTH. We are trying to do the same in French....obviously at the MTH stage now. I decided not to teach German :D (man, you should have heard my sister berate me and call me a complete slacker :lol:). I need fun series in Latin and Greek, those easy readers are often far from fun. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
displace Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Look at any of the free Kindle ebooks with fewer than 4 stars. They are mostly awful, and often written by children.Yet another vote for this! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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