Elsie Dinsmore

[raineymott]

My parents did NOT approve of Mark Twain. I still haven't read Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.

I remember when I first read the Elsie Dinsmore books, I thought she was great and tried to be like her...didn't work, haha. As I got older I saw they were pretty stupid and stopped reading them (I got up to like book 14 or something...they were getting pretty similar by then anyway...rich family goes somewhere, absolutely no plot, etc). My parents also didn't like the Mandie books or Judy Bloom.

Plus they censored my books until I was like 20, and the only reason they didn't then was because I wasn't supposed to get anything unless it was in the kid/teen section anyway and I knew that if I got something they would question, they would make a big deal about it so I just didn't do it.

[failsafe]

Plus they censored my books until I was like 20, and the only reason they didn't then was because I wasn't supposed to get anything unless it was in the kid/teen section anyway and I knew that if I got something they would question, they would make a big deal about it so I just didn't do it.

Man that would have driven me nuts. The librarians used to know our family pretty well, because I was always the kid that left the library with the stack of books taller than she was.

Granted, I'm sure my parents would have said something if I had come to the checkout corner of the bookstore with porn, or something, but I was reading above my grade level, so if they had limited me to only "grade appropriate" reading I would have been bored. Plus most "bad" stuff just soars over kids' heads anyway.

That being said, I LOVED the Christy & Todd series in fourth grade or so. And I looked them up on Google Books yesterday and man are they dumb.

[oscar]

Man that would have driven me nuts. The librarians used to know our family pretty well, because I was always the kid that left the library with the stack of books taller than she was.

Granted, I'm sure my parents would have said something if I had come to the checkout corner of the bookstore with porn, or something, but I was reading above my grade level, so if they had limited me to only "grade appropriate" reading I would have been bored. Plus most "bad" stuff just soars over kids' heads anyway.

That being said, I LOVED the Christy & Todd series in fourth grade or so. And I looked them up on Google Books yesterday and man are they dumb.

Ha! When I was 7 or 8, I picked up "The Valley of Horses" at a library book sale. My mom told me I might want to put it back - not because of the adult content, but because she thought it was not very well written and I'd be sorry I spent my money on it. I think that's the only time my parents commented on my choice of reading.

[Juniper]

Fundies would hate my mother. Not only did she encourage me reading everything I could get my hands on, she let me read whatever books she was reading, no matter the content. And 100% cosign on the "bad" stuff going over kids' heads. Most of the racier stuff didn't even register with me until I reread it years later.

It always kills me to hear about how fundies can't read some of the amazing books out there because it might put "bad" thoughts into their heads. Especially because, gasp, the thoughts might open their eyes a little more to the world.

[bea]

I'm most of the way through the second book. The EMBRACING! The tragedy! The trembling lips and floods of tears! The father kissing the little girl on her ruby lips (ew)!

It's like a car crash - I can't stop reading it. It's racist, classist, sexist, probably a few other things as well - can fundies really believe this is good to give their kids as some kind of model to imitate?

[Marserin]

People have been finding Elsie problematic for a long time. O. Henry wrote a parody of them. And L.M. Montgomery, had a character say to another character, in a derisive way, "Go and read the Elsie books!"

[Olivia]

I read one of those when I was a little fundie girl and even then, just couldn't wrap my head around it (although my parents were nice-fundie, so maybe that was my problem). The thing that struck me as a kid was that the author seemed to enjoy coming up with ways for adults to be cruel and unloving to children, and it just seemed... bizarre...

[CanticleoftheTurning]

thatmom.com/2011/07/21/the-sins-of-partiality-and-triviality-and-the-curriculum-that-promotes-them/

A friend and I were both talking about patriarchy in homeschooling (both grew up in rather dysfunctional homes) and about how crappy the Elsie Dinsmore series is, when she shared this link with me. It's a really well written look at how the whole patriarchy thing tries to delude women into thinking they can be perfect wives and mothers based on rewriting history.

The bit about Elsie Dinsmore is down at the bottom, and as my friend said, it's chock full of emotional abuse and incest-ish family relationships and things like that. And this is what the fundies are using to brainwash their kids.

Just creepy all around.

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

I was reading some stuff about the creeptastic Elsie Dinsmore books, and I realized that I have a very clear memory of having the incident where Elise refuses to play piano on Sunday being read to me in Russian when I was about 6 years old.

What this means is that someone in the Soviet Union translated the Elsie Dinsmore books into Russian, and that they were available at Russian bookstores in the mid 1980s. A super-Christian book series. I can't wrap my mind around this!

I'll have to ask my mom if she remembers where she found it or why she thought it was a good idea to read it to me....Weird.