Monday, November 24, 2008

Korean Kids Really ARE More Innocent

I've been reading Walk Two Moons with my 6th grade reading class and today our discussion included the revelation of a character's mother having had a child before marriage whom she gave up. My students were VERY puzzled and kept asking in different ways trying to confirm that she in fact had not been married and yet had had a child. Finally, in Korean, one of the kids opined that it was a miracle. The book has a number of unusual plot twists, so apparently, a virgin birth required no more suspension of disbelief than, say, the main character's mother dying in a wreck (which had also been revealed in the portion we discussed today). Fortunately, the virgin birth scenario seemed no less plausible to them than the rest of the story and I was able to put away my jazz hands. :-)

1 comment:

JRS said...

I had exactly the same situation--with a Japanese EIGHTH grader. And this was a girl who had spent most of her formative years in Britain. And was not a Christian. She really didn't understand how there could be a character who had a mother that had never been married to her father.

It's kind of cute, really, given that prostitution (enjo kosai) was a problem at this school.