On Force-Feeding the Classics or "Eat Your Classics! They're Good For You!"

With all the blog-talk about “the Classics” in literature, (see Terri Giuliamo Long’s thoughtful words or The Pen and Muse's musings) I thought to finally jump on the proverbial band-wagon and contribute my two cents, (though I missed all the fun blog-hopping and contests which, regrettably, I always seem to do).

My daughter is eleven and an avid reader.  While she was younger, and at the mercy of listening to whatever Mommy picked out to read, she was fed a steady diet of my own favorites from a childhood steeped in reading:  “Island of the Blue Dolphins” and Charlotte and her web.  All the “Little House” books, ad nauseum, “The Secret Garden” and “The Little Princess”.  You get my drift.

Then, the fairies struck.  Perhaps it was the onslaught of Tink and her irrepressible pals (No disrespect to Gail Carson Levine  and her fabulous “Fairie-Dust and the quest for the Egg”) or it is quite possible the endless stream of “Rainbow Fairies” books (which were her first solo read) drilled FAIRIES! in to her consciousness like some type of crazy thought-reform cult.  Regardless, she had caught a whiff of fantasy books and has since to waver from her chosen genre, despite all my offerings.  She will occasionally read one of my "classic" choices, but usually as a home-school history read, not “for fun”.  Really?

  I remember reading “Where the Red Fern Grows” in Mr. Kaiser’s sixth grade English class in 1977.  (Yes, I'm old.) Being a fast reader, I reached the end of the book while everyone else was still off chasing 'coons.  I remember actually sobbing at my desk, my head bent low over the book, trying in vain to hold back the flood of emotions that tore through me as I read the ending. (I won’t give it away here since my daughter usually reads my blog and I still have hope she will read this book.)
It changed my relationship with books--forever.  Nothing had ever before moved me in such a way.

There weren’t so many choices for reading when I was eleven.  We were what one might call an “undiscovered tween market” or , if there had been the overwhelming choices for fantasy, I might have swung my daughter’s way with my reading choices too.  My "fantasy" reads were “ghost stories” like "The Amityville Horror" and V.C. Andrews books, and I read them almost guiltily.  I knew most were trash, and I usually leaned more towards books with the shiny Newbury gilded to its front cover.

But now, I wonder.  Will enforcing these "classics" just make my daughter dislike them?  Will it be like making her eat French onion soup with quite possibly the same results?  After reading the definitions for “a classic” I wonder if it is even relevant any more, hence the quotation marks.  We are all such creatures of our own creations.  Pinterest, Facebook, playlists, blogsites…we have all become specialists of our own interests, and (I think) people are too busy compiling their own canons, and declaring them sound, to bother playing catch-up. 

I really am on the ol’ fence-post on this one.  What do you think Readers?  Writers?  Do we enforce the old standards on the impressionable young minds of the world, or do we let them revel in dystopian zombie fantasy or whatever the hell else they like to read simply because…they are reading.

 Is that enough?  Shouldn’t it be enough?

Discuss.