From 1885, and just as exciting for it

Posts and threads, April–October 2025

It's not like everything was better before (even though some things were ;)) but I do think that my son gets exposed to enough modern children's books, movies and games anyway, so it's fun to try to offer something a bit different. And extra fun when he really gets into it...

We just finished reading Ilddåben by Einar Spang, a book from 1931 that tells a really exciting story about the privateering years (when England blockaded Norway in the years before 1814, and Norway depended on smuggling wood to Denmark and grain back so as not to starve), with adventure, heroism, and an incredible amount of nautical vocabulary.

And tonight we watched Robin Hood from 1938. It was beautifully restored, and incredibly well made — completely impossible to imagine that it was that old. And my son sat glued to the screen...

Then we went upstairs and had some yogurt before bed, and I found a new book on his shelf to read from — Little Lord Fauntleroy. It was actually the first book I ever read in English, in junior high. But we're reading it in Norwegian. It's actually all the way from 1885... And just as exciting for it!

How the books turn up

For us it has often been discovered through me remembering things I read as a kid — I also still have a lot of the books I had back then, and the kid reads them with great interest. But we also often find an interesting book at Resirkula, and end up ordering more books by the same author through interlibrary loan.

Found an old boys' book at Resirkula, "I Tordenskjolds bukser". It went straight down, and then of course we had to go out and order more books by the same author. And soon more boys' books from 1927 and 1930 are dropping in!

(One trick is that we still read to him every night, and even if a book maybe looks challenging, if I've read a chapter over the yogurt he'll often take the book to his room and want to keep going on his own.)

Super important to read — my son is 11 and still gets read to every night. Digging a little deeper in the bookshelves for books that both parents and kids enjoy can help — I often think a lot of the older classics have much richer language and more interesting content than some of what's at the front of the library shelves... I thought it might be useful to try to write down some titles and authors and thoughts, for other kids and parents who'd like to go a bit beyond "Detektivbyrå #2". The List →

The letter to the author

My kid who is 10 wrote a letter to the author of this book that he is obsessed with. The book is 25 years old, I had never heard about the author and he should be 80 by now, but you can look up everyone's address in Norway so I gave it to him, and he sent him a very cute letter.

3 April 2025 · @houshuang

I somehow never had the idea to write to an author when I was young, although I read a lot, but I did send a long proposal to the minister of education when in secondary school, and got a nice hand-written note back.

4 April 2025 · @houshuang

My son, who's nine, has read the Odyssey in a children's version, and now asks me about the Persian Wars while we're driving, so I'm doing my part ;)

6 March 2024 · Vi som liker latin og gammelgresk

What rubs off

People can go ahead and watch soccer, but I've at least developed a lot as an adult — always been a big reader, but mostly modern thrillers, crime and some non-fiction... The last couple of years I've gotten interested in ancient history, which led to Greek myths, Greek tragedies and Homer, which led to an interest in the history of drama, Shakespeare and Ibsen and Holberg... Which led to NRK Fjernsynsteateret, and London National Theatre (which is a treasure!), which led to an interest in opera, which led to an interest in classical music... and now I'm sitting here reading some books on how to understand poems...

And all of this that I'm doing of course rubs off on my son — both because we take him to opera and concerts, watch opera on Met Opera (there are some that work really well for kids), but also because he sees that his parents like learning and trying new things and aren't afraid of something being hard at the start...

The school library

Have a son who's a very keen reader, but gets scared easily by intense stuff. At the library (which is fantastic, glad we have it!) it goes straight from "eight-year-old bikes to soccer practice with snot in his nose, gets bullied, but everyone ends up friends", to dark fantasy for 15-year-olds type stuff.

I've dug up lots of exciting books for him that we've read together and that he's read alone, a lot of it I've found at our local waste station, where they put out old books — everything from old children's books like Agaton Sax, The Little Vampire, but also the Odyssey and the Iliad for kids, three volumes on King Arthur by Rosemary Sutcliff, several big books on Norse mythology, Greek mythology, time travel with vikings... and biographies! They have almost no biographies at the library anymore, but we find Thomas Alva Edison, Shakespeare, Armstrong — that's so exciting. Then we look at maps together, discuss. Now he's reading The Martian by Andy Weir and we're discussing CO2 production and solar cells and all kinds of stuff.

They have a school library, but I asked if he had ever had a teacher who said "you read well, here's a slightly challenging book that I think you'd like, that you might not have found on your own". Never.

I asked if they had biographies, and they said they didn't have them because not that many get published these days and "kids don't want old books anyway"... Who said that?

Not worried about my own son, but incredibly sad that it has to depend so much on the parents' effort.