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We all have them -- those childhood favorites that we can't wait to share with our kids. I still have my Gary Paulsen books from when I was a kid -- Hatchet and The River. I remember absolutely loving these books! Well, the day came when I introduced them to my son. I decided that even though I typically allow my boys to read whatever they want for their daily reading time for school, I was going to require my oldest to read a few specific books this year. They would be books that I either loved as a kid or that I felt were important to cover at his age. First up was Hatchet. To put it lightly, that was a total bust, ha!

He completely HATED it! I thought maybe once he got further into the story, he would enjoy it. Nope. Not one bit. And you know what? That's okay. It just wasn't his cup of tea. He loves documentaries about this sort of thing. He loves movies about this sort of thing. But apparently in book form, it wasn't a winner!

Do you require specific books for your children to read? Or have a set curriculum that requires books outside of the genre that they love? I think it's good to expose them to things outside of what they typically read and I'm still glad I had Sam read it, but I definitely won't be asking him to read the sequel as planned, ha!

That said, are there any novels that you remembering LOVING, but your kids hated?

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Update: So after writing about this, I had my boys sit down with me and watch the movie based on Hatchet. Thankfully, I was able to find it on YouTube. It must've been uploaded from a VHS tape, because the quality was absolutely horrendous! Nevertheless, we watched it. It turns out, Sam really enjoyed the movie! In fact, he's still talking about it randomly. On our way to an appointment earlier today, he asked why the pilot had a heart attack. At first, I had no idea what he was talking about so he had to elaborate. Clearly, the movie won him over way more than the book!

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Side note: For anyone wondering, when I have my boys read books of their choosing -- or books that I choose for them -- I have them knock out one of the activities in their Reading Journal that I blogged about last week. If you think that might be something you'd like your children to do, definitely check out that blog post here.