I enjoyed this film's artwork and my 7-year-old daughter enjoyed it too. However, I found the main premise - that a 6-year-old boy who isn't yet reading ought to be pressurized into doing so - quite troubling.
The reality is that children have a very wide natural time range for learning to read, even wider than they have for learning to walk or talk. Some children learn at 3, some at 12 or 13. The late readers catch up very quickly with early ones, and are none the worse for it.
Yet everyone in the film, including the parents, is worried about the boy not yet reading fluently. He's still so little! I loved the references to imagination in the story, and I think it should have focused wholly on that instead.
The reality is that children have a very wide natural time range for learning to read, even wider than they have for learning to walk or talk. Some children learn at 3, some at 12 or 13. The late readers catch up very quickly with early ones, and are none the worse for it.
Yet everyone in the film, including the parents, is worried about the boy not yet reading fluently. He's still so little! I loved the references to imagination in the story, and I think it should have focused wholly on that instead.
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