Need to vent: my 11-year-old has completely lost her passion for reading as a result of her summer reading requirement.
By bronzeFish1980
My 11-year-old is a big reader—she’s already finished more than 150 books. She wrapped up *The Refugee* a little under three weeks ago and it really messed her up. There’s a point where the mom has to pick which one of her two kids to save, and it just broke her. Since then it’s been nonstop crying, she’s been way too into screen time, her eating habits have slipped, and she seems extra sensitive to certain words. Now she doesn’t really want to read at all. She still has one more book for the summer: *George Takei: They Called Us Enemy*. I’m hoping that one won’t be as brutal, but I still think these kinds of intense books are important—I’m just not sure it’s the right time for her to take this level of stuff on. I’d love to hear what you think about whether now is (or isn’t) the right moment for her to read this kind of heavy literature. We’ve had a lot of calm conversations, but I’m honestly worried the next book might make her quit reading for good. Edit: it’s definitely *The Refugee* (not *The Immigrant*). It also has parts where a kid gets their foot bitten off by a shark, a mom has to choose between sending one child into a concentration camp to save the other, and it covers their dad being tortured too. There are also people being put into barrels and drowned/executed.