A review by apochemu
Deconstructing Penguins: Parents, Kids, and the Bond of Reading by Nancy Goldstone, Lawrence Goldstone

3.0

I have very mixed feelings about this book. It certainly does a good job teaching how to analyze a book - its plot, characters, setting, underlining morals, etc. If you want to teach that to your child this book will give you a great framework. Something I'm sure will come in handy in high school and university. However, I'm afraid I don't agree with them about every author tucking away a single secret lesson they're trying to teach. I don't like the approach of analyzing the crap out of a book and breaking it all down into a bunch of little parts and then putting it back together in one specific way. As an adult who thoroughly enjoys book clubs, if I went to one of theirs I'd never go back to a second. I think books can mean something different to every reader and that's ok. It's great to hear about a POV from a reader with a different life/background than me and appreciate their insights. I don't like the idea of guiding my child to the one lesson I've planned for them to learn. I like having meaningful back and forth discussions of what we got out of it, not "who is the protagonist" and "what does this teach us about society", blah blah. Idk, maybe my high school and college over-analytical teachers ruined it for me, but I think this type of analyzing totally kills books for me.