Cotton-Pickin’ Days

- A Girl of the Limberlost
- The Secret Garden
- The Railway Children
- Number the Stars
- A Separate Peace
- Who Has Seen the Wind?
- The Root Cellar
- The Sky is Falling (the novel by Kit Pearson, not Sidney Sheldon)
- Little Lord Fauntleroy

There’s a lot more, but these are from the top of my head.

PS - I love Anne of Green Gables.

echomyst: What a great list! I’ll have to check out a few from the library because I don’t think I’ve read any except The Secret Garden and perhaps The Railway Children. Maybe the others will ring a bell once I get them.

Since Paris doesn’t seem like a big reader to me, I’ll recommend asking her driver to take her into South Central LA. Or to make the three our trip across the boarder to Tijuana and it’s shanty-town suburbs. Books are good. Seeing, smelling, hearing and touching are better.

I love the echomyst’s list and would add:

- Ike and Mama (series of books about a Jewish boy growing up in NYC during the depression)
- The Five Little Peppers
- Jake and the Kid
- Betsy Tacy and Tib

You’re assuming she can read. *meow*

I would have to add Go Ask Alice. I can’t tell you what an effect that book had on my life.

Another good one would be Black Beauty.

If you’re not sticking with children’s books, there are plenty more, in particular by authors from developing countries, especially India.

That said, I would have to say that I did not realize how (relatively) wealthy my family was nor how privildged I was, simply to be born a white United States citizen, by comparison to children in other places around the world.

hmmm..I didn’t read these kind of books till I was 12-13. But that was also because I wasn’t exposed to Western literature till then. In India we read and were read a lot of stories from Bhagavad Gita and other epic stories and other folk tales…and yeah..they were are from a few thousand years ago. The things I read were comics, Spiderman, Mandrake, Peanuts, Asterix!

I lived a sheltered life I guess. I never learnt about poverty in India till much later. Yes, I saw it when we went into the city, the beggars every where, but it was never explained to me and hence never knew. I just knew that they were different, that we were different.

If she said that she was an adult and didn’t know the privileged background she came from now then there’s something wrong… But I get what she says, even though my dad was never a millionaire, but we were better off than many in our country at the time!

Oh, how could I have forgotten…. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the original Roald Dahl, of course).

The first book that springs to my mind is Trixie Belden, just because it has the contrast between Trixie, who lived pretty normally for a middle class American kid, and Honey, who did actually live in a mansion.

The Box Car Children books spring to mind too, but only kind of snarkily, if you know what I mean.

Harriet the Spy is great. While Harriet doesn’t live in a mansion, she is quite comfortable. Then she goes and visits Golly’s mom. Another contrast story.

Of course, The Color Purple, and Beloved, also spring to mind.

she leads a life.. way too good!

i dont have any to add on coz i hardly read.. but i think i am gonna start checkin out all the good books u guys listed here!

Following up on Baldman, I’d also Ms. Hilton have to work for two weeks at two autism schools, one that’s very good and another that is, well, 1960ish.

More upbeatly (word?), I would suggest:

Child of the Owl
Louise Erdrich’s novels for young adults

It says a lot about Paris’ family, that she didn’t realize she was living in a mansion. That tells me they didn’t spend their time comparing their life to the lives of others, and making a big deal out of money and status and circumstances. Sounds like she just got to be a kid for a while, and that’s pretty cool.

Deb,
I have to disagree with you. I’m pretty sure I get what you’re saying about not “comparing their life to the lives of others,” but when you have that kind of money you MUST make a big deal of it. Not in the sense of “Yippee! Look at how rich we are!” or even in the standard “golly-gosh-aren’t-we-lucky?” way. People with that kind of money MUST be taught about the poor and the potential power their money gives them.

This is bold but I’ll say it: To raise a child blind to poverty is a failure in parenting.

Paris seems to be quite the idiot, but no one would care about her at all if she didn’t come from wealth. She’d just be lost in the crowd of people who party away their lives. I agree that we completely disagree. people “must” be taught these things? She doesn’t owe the world anything, any more than any of us do.

It’s nice when people help those less fortunate. It’s also nice when the less fortunate make an effort to help themselves. It’s nice when people who have wealth spread it around a bit improving the circumstances of innocents, such as children. But in my opinion, heavily biased, it isn’t an obligation.

Bald man: I would have thought she’d change a little after that show she did with Nicole Ritchie, but it just seemed to have made her more determined to maintain that persona. What’s really going on inside her heart and mind? She couldn’t be that shallow, could she? After a sheltered and glitzy upbringing, maybe she is.

Kate: Thanks! I’ve always meant to read the Besty Tacy books.

lizardek: You are baaaaaaaaaad. Meow back at ya.

river2sea72: Lots and lots of books out there for people who’re unable to physically step outside their world. Even though we have lived in many different parts of the world, we’ve always been relativelys spoiled. I don’t know if Stephen will have the opportunity to observe the way families of different income levels live but i will definitely be talking to him about it with the help of books.

Smitha: My family wasn’t particularly well off until around my high school years. I certainly realized that some people lived in mansions but nobody ever made a big deal out of it or even acted like they noticed. The fact that Paris would remember that says a lot about the sharp contrast between her life and her friends’. I don’t know if her parents bothered to talk to her about this or not (I saw somewhere that they really weren’t around much anyway).

smallbully: Yay! I totally wanted people to tell me what books are worth reading. I’m glad you think the same.

Kristina: You are too one-track mind! Just kidding. Volunteering is definitely one of the activities I would like Stephen to become involved in. Maybe he’ll find it interesting to work with other kids!

Deb: I understand your point, but based on what I’ve seen and read about their family, nothing about their upbringing seems remotely childlike at all. Lavish shopping and partying was the norm which is growing up way too fast in my opinion.

And, it’s not like I think she owes anybody anything, but I couldn’t live the way she has and feel truly fulfilled or come close to believing that I’ve lived meaningfully. Of course, if she’s happy the way she is, more power to her! If she weren’t around to make fun of or to gawk at, life would be all too boring.

Lkeele: Oops! I forgot to respond to you! The book about Trixie sounds perfect. I loved Harriet the Spy. Hmmm, I think I may have to pay a visit to the library soon.

One way that we’re going to try to make sure that Sadie encounters all kinds of people is by committing to sending her to public school through high school if at all possible.

I should keep this thread bookmarked. Lots of summer readings up ahead!

I also disagree with Deb’s statement: “That tells me they didn?t spend their time comparing their life to the lives of others, and making a big deal out of money and status and circumstances.” It’s not about comparisions, but seeing and learning about the world around us. It’s about associating with people from all walks of life, not merely with the people from your privileged upper-class social circles.

I’m not saying children shouldn’t be educated about other people, but to do so from a stance of “we have money and they don’t” , and the expectations that wealthy people *owe* others a cut of the money, is what I object to.

I don’t know much about Paris, but if parties and shopping and such were the norm for her from tiny tot-hood, then I expect no one taught her much about “the real world”, or else she was always as dumb as the media portrays her as now.

My own kids are growing up without seeing other people by the color of their skin or the circumstances of their life. I’m not going to take them to the truly bad parts of our town to teach them the difference between poverty and middle class- not even law enforcement goes there with a single unit, but there are all manner of ways to mingle. Public school, grocery shopping, playing at the park, going to the library or cultural festivals throughout the summer.

I’d hope no one assumes I’m upper class, though I wish I had that kind of money! A good chunk of it would go straight to the Shriners Hospitals for Children.

I realized too that I hadn’t offered any book suggestions, :O
Helen Keller
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Misty of Chincoteague

Deb: We know you’re not promoting Paris’s lifestyle or state of affairs but just saying live and let live, right? Most of us do what we think is best for our kids. I hope Paris wasn’t as neglected by her parents as it appears.

Thanks for the book recommendations!

with regards to that sentence by paris, i totally agree with Smitha.

my parents were loving and around most of the time, but they tried not to make me class (or whatever you call it) conscious, making me attend neighbourhood kindergarten and primary school. most of my friends were staying in flats, but to me, i just see it like, they are just wearing different clothes from me, but we are all essentially the same. in fact there were times when i suggested to my dad to shift to flats like my friends’ as i could take the lifts everyday and could look into neighbour’s house to say hello while walking along the corridor to the house!

it was only when i reached about 13 or 14, that i realised the “difference”, well, at least to these people i was different. i do not know why i remember this, but i suppose i was a little surprised to realised this at that time. i can’t remember how i realised it, whether suddenly, or over time too. also, it may not be a bad thing to let a child mix with others with very different lifestyles, as this can prevent the child growing up to be a snooty elitist. well i suppose that was my dad’s intention when he put me to those schools and i agree with him even now.

i did read all the books you have listed too. some when i was 10 some later around 14. in fact i love LHontheP and Anne of Green Gables. however, at that time when i read the books, though they talked about being poor and so on, i didnt associate it with myself or any of my friends, because my friends’ families though weren’t well off, they weren’t starving as well.

well, i am new to your blog. so far i am enjoying it!

Dee: Hi and welcome! That’s an interesting point you make about not really feeling that the books related to your own life or those of the people you knew. But I suspect that the books didn’t seem too foreign to you either precisely because you had been exposed to different life situations in some form while you were growing up.

The funny thing is, I read those books and knew that fiction and real life were nothing alike. But, I also romanticised the books to the extent that I thought many parts of it were better than my somewhat comfortable life. lol The grass is always greener on the other side!

[...] After our spirited discussion about Paris Hilton’s apparent cluelessness about world society, I was gratified to see Jamie Johnson, heir of the Johnson & Johnson fortune, talking about his films on Oprah. I’d known so many people in my situation at 20, who were going to inherit a great deal of money at age 21, but somehow managed to live unproductive and tragic?and even in some cases miserable?lives. [...]

[...] After our spirited discussion about Paris Hilton’s apparent cluelessness about world society, I was gratified to see Jamie Johnson, heir of the Johnson & Johnson fortune, talking about his films on Oprah. I’d known so many people in my situation at 20, who were going to inherit a great deal of money at age 21, but somehow managed to live unproductive and tragic?and even in some cases miserable?lives. [...]