I never did either but now that I think about the book, it really does show bullying behavior of making fun of the "duckling" and leaving him out. I just covered bullying again with one of my groups. Would you believe that all 15 girls have been bullied?
I would love to read this again. Our daughter was a victim of bullying last year, it was miserable! It makes me mad as a parent but also very sad for the one who is doing the bullying. An eye opening experience.
I love this book. My children love the Berenstain Bairs. It's great to see a fictional character go through these situations so they know how to handle it if it happens to them.
This books has many books available for a variety of ages. You can actually read the books online (great for smartboards) and then once you read the book, you can select a charity to donate a book. For the every book you read off the website, a book is donated to the charity of your choice.
I listened on MPR's morning show when the Prof. who did this was on to discuss. I admit that I think it is not necessary to sanitize the language- while I understood the teacher who called in to say it would be nice to teach the book without addressing the "N" word, I think that addressing it is part of what the book has to teach. I'm curious if you caught any of that on MPR?
I think it is so dumb to censor Huckleberry Finn. The book is a great read and a good look at how some people thought in those days. Might help us understand our history. Teachers can explain the background for students. I read something about this in the NY Times. Thanks for the post Nathan. I think this is an important topic for us to be thinking about.
I do this with my Girl Scout groups and the girls are very receptive to listening to the stories. It seems to relax them. My only problem, I have little interrupters that like to tell me about their dog which was triggered by the dog in the book.