Thursday, October 16, 2008

the kids LOVED this movie


Meeley read the book in 4th grade and had encouraged me to do the same. When we saw that City of Ember had been made into a movie, we just had to see it. (There are four books in the series - if your kids are anything like mine, they'll want to read them all.)

Speaking of book series, my 5th grader recently came home with the first in a new one. It was entitled, "Shadow Children: Among the Hidden."

Wow, talk about deep.

In the book, drastic measures are taken to deal with overpopulation. Families are only allowed to have two children - women who become pregnant again must hide or be forced to terminate their pregnancies. The "illegal" children (i.e. Shadow Children) found are killed. Government has taken control of everything. Pretty scary. It's one of the things that makes me leery of granting government too much power and responsibility. (Meeley was shocked to learn that population control is very real for the people of China. His response: That will never happen here, right? Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that far out there with everyone's fears of global warming kicking into high gear. Check out THIS ARTICLE to see what I'm talking about.)

It was a compelling book that opened the door for several big conversations. (Which is precisely why I like to read what they read - granted, this was much a much heavier conversation than usual.)

(Why I keep writing within parenthesis, I don't know.)

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tina:
Landen has read all the books in that series (Shadow Children) and found them all to be very good.

That article is VERY, VERY disturbing. That is just one more reason I am going to vote for John McCain. Even though he supports Global Warming issues, he definitely believes in smaller government. And he's pro-life.

Enjoy your day!

Tina Vega said...

Thanks, Jan!