This is our fifth week in The Do Not Read Report and today’s book series is one that caught me by surprise with its violence. The idea behind these posts is to share the books that I really did not want my kids to read. Scholastic is a publishing brand that many parents trust, especially when you let your child wander through a book fair targeted for younger children. This book series is filled with violence and absolutely not for young children.
Let me introduce the book first.
THIS WEEK’S BOOK SERIES:
Guardians of Ga’Hoole by Kathryn Lasky
Summary: A young owl falls from the nest and is taken to a place, called a school for orphaned owls. The ‘school’ is actually controlled by a totalitarian cult of pure owls who use the facility to brainwash youngsters they have captured.
THE GUARDIANS OF GA’HOOLE IS DESCRIBED AS A FANTASY ADVENTURE SERIES FOR CHILDREN BUT IT IS NOT A STORY ABOUT ADVENTURE. IT IS A POORLY-WRITTEN STORY FILLED WITH VIOLENCE AND ADULT THEMES.
This series is recommended for elementary-aged children by the publisher and school districts throughout the country.
Do you want to fill your child’s head with slavery, violence, loss, cannibalism, and trafficking, all packaged in volumes filled with inconsistent story elements and poor grammar?
THE SERIES TEACHES YOUR CHILD:
- Use a servile nanny to care for your little ones: The owls all have snake-nannies who care for all their owlets. The snake-nannies are depicted as servile creatures.
- Trafficking: Young owls are captured when they stray too far from their parents and are taken away to be brainwashed and used for labor.
- Gruesome Deaths: Discussion by characters of a little chick who gets eaten by the evil owls in a very gruesome manner. Definitely NOT what you want to put into the head of your child.
- Inconsistent Story Elements: Gylfie, the young owlet, somehow knows that communications between captive owls can only take place when the captors are singing. but that only happens once during the story.
- Language Dumbed-down: Based on the vocabulary, this story was written for very young children as they are starting to learn to read. Yet the themes and events are scary and disturbing, even for older children.
BOOKS IN THE SERIES:
Guardians of Ga’Hoole
- The Capture
- The Journey
- The Rescue
- The Siege
- The Shattering
- The Burning
- The Hatchling
- The Outcast
- The First Collier
- The Coming of Hoole
- To Be a King
- The Golden Tree
- The River of Wind
- Exile
- The War of the Ember
- The Rise of a Legend
Legends of Ga’Hoole
- The First Collier
- The Coming of Hoole
- To Be a King
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kathryn Lasky, born in 1944, is a children’s author with a degree in English and another in early childhood education.
Her stories fall into two basic categories, the first being anthropomorphize animal tales like the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series and Wolves of The Beyond. She has also written a fair number of loosely historical novels for children including several of the Dear America books and the Royal Diaries.
Her most recent foray into children’s literature is a book called Night Witches that describes the adventures of a regiment of Soviet female bomber pilots who fought in WWII.
