Road trips are a great opportunity to have open-ended discussions with your children. If you have the time, and a super-long road trip, consider listening to an audio-book and then talking about your selection.
Selecting a Book
It can be difficult to choose a book that is interesting and worthy of discussion when there is a variety of age groups in the car. Try to find a book that is entertaining, and open to interpretation on many levels.
I’ve found some great candidates, and guidance for book discussions, in Deconstructing Penguins: Parents, Kids and the Bond of Reading by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone. Veterans of library groups for tweens (ages 7-11,) the Goldstones have found that children can participate fully in sophisticated literary analysis, but that what they read does matter. The authors encourage children to look at every book as a mystery that the reader can solve to discover if the author has successfully conveyed his message through the use of plot, setting, characters, and central conflict.
For more thoughts on finding books to discuss:
Getting The Book
If you have planned ahead, you can get many books on CD at your local library or by ordering from Amazon.
Since I’m rarely that organized, I’m grateful that I can easily download audio-books to my ipod using the itunes store or my local library’s online services. Next time, I may even set up an account with Audible.com so that I just pay a small, monthly fee to borrow audio-books.
Find free audio-books and how to ipod your car on Wired On The Road.
Our Book
Although George Orwell’s Animal Farm is rarely recommended for tweens, the Goldstones recommend this book for fourth graders. Since I was traveling with a 2nd and a 6th grader, I figured that this book could appeal to both. Also, since we were listening to the audio-book version, both children could handle the difficult vocabulary and sophisticated language. It was easy to pause the ipod when they encountered unfamiliar words or ideas.
Discussing Animal Farm
We didn’t have a literary guide in the car, so we just talked about the story. The long, and monotonous, prologue sparked the first questions. The rest of the discussion just spun off from that beginning:
- How is Animal Farm a fairy story? In the prologue, C.M. Wodehouse explains that Animal Farm is a fairy story in the sense that it lacks a moral, and that fairy stories exist outside of morality. Does it seem right that the bad guy is just as likely to win (as the good guy) in this and other fairly tales?
- What is communism? How is Animal Farm communist? Suggestions for discussing this complex subject:
- How is Snowball like Mr. Nobody (the culprit who is often blamed for misdeeds in our home.) Why do people in power like to blame everything on a scapegoat? How does this unify public opinion and encourage support for the leader? How do bullies use this tactic in the school setting?
- Somehow, we found ourselves discussing the same questions about Animal Farm that the Goldstones suggest in the chapter titled, Putting It All Together: What Is The Book Really About? We decided that Orwell was telling us that, regardless of the outcome, it is the individual’s responsibility to speak up for what they know is right – even if, or especially if, there are a bunch of sheep trying to drown your voice with mindless chanting of the oppressor’s message. This is true in any group, whether it is school, city, state, etc. The kids were excited about questioning authority and this led to a fruitful discussion about what authorities should be questioned: books; teachers; bullies; Wikipedia; television; newspapers; etc.
More Literary Guides To Fuel Book Discussion
Book Babes: A Mother-Daughter Book Club
Carnival of Family Life: The Well-Read Life Edition
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I love audiobooks! We’ve gone through countless books this way – in the car, at home,…Entire series even. Great post and links, and thanks for linking to the carnival of family life!
This is a great idea, I wish we’d done something like this on a long road trip from CT to FL when I was 12. I read this book for school in Junior High. It’s a classic and very appropriate for this age group. Without the discussions, alot can be missed.
Animal Farm is a great book. Communism aside, some very important life lessons there.
Reading books or listening to audio books is always my favorite and I always have them copy to my mp3 or mp4 player so that I can listen to them whenever I am driving for hours (which I do every week)
Thanks for your recommendation.
When my husband and I would travel, we would read a loud to each other. I really enjoyed those long trips for the discussions our readings sparked. I recently drove 16 hours with two toddlers. One of my tricks was downloading many of the fables and Grimms Tales for toddlers. Storynory.com has a great collection of children’s stories all for free. I also love our local library’s audio book selection.
Cindy, Thank you! Storynory.com is awesome!
Through it’s itunes link, I was able to set up subscritions to various sites that will now download stories directly. Some free subscription services that sound interesting:
internationaltales.com
candlelightstories.com
You know, that’s funny. My Mom and I do that NOW when we go away together. We bring along a “trip book” to read together to pass the time in the car and to avoid turning on the television. It’s so much nicer than sticking our noses in our own books because we’re doing it together, and when we have an audio-book version as backup for when we’re too tired to read out-loud ourselves, even better!
Strange, though–getting her to discuss the book, any book, is hard!
I’m taking public transport and the journey to my job takes about 40 mins, many people may consider it very uncomfortable, but I’m really thankful about those time, I can do my reading and as I read more, I can post more in my blog.
Again, it’s a limitation that can be an advantage, as I’m really using my time to read without any distraction, especially from my notebook.
I do enjoy reading while traveling!
Cheers,
Robert
Wonderful post! I’m another fan of audiobooks (see http://adsoofmelk.wordpress.com/2008/01/03/in-praise-of-audiobooks/), especially since it seems like I’m in the car constantly.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Scarlet Letter worked well for us — thanks for the Animal Farm recommendation and the resources!