They are small things, but they are told beautifully and I actually think my 5 (soon to be 6) year old daughter enjoyed them all the more because she could so well relate to the feelings (and trials) Ramona was having and experiencing. Her trials are things like not being sure her kindergarten teacher likes her, or dealing with the fallout of a bad tantrum. at least so far, we have only gotten through 4 books) Nothing huge happens here, no monsters need defeating, no saving the world, just little Ramona trying to learn how to grow up and be a good person. The first book starts with Ramona age 4 and each subsequent book she is a year older. Basically this series follows the growth of a precocious little girl, named Ramona, and all her little innocent escapades as she grows up. About the story itself.I never read these books as a child so was unfamiliar with them when I started. My wife was also engrossed and for the first time on that vacation I was able to experience a bit of quiet, the whole family quietly listened to the antics of Ramona and enjoyed her little story. What a great choice!!! My 5 year old daughter was engrossed by this story and did not speak a peep for 6 hours straight as we drove the last 400 miles from Northern Cali to Washington. Nabokov quietly lets us know that Lolita cries herself to sleep every night.While on vacation and driving the length of California back up from San Diego I downloaded this book for my family to listen to as we drove the long slog of I5.

Being in love is ultimately no excuse for monstrous actions, even if Humbert Humbert insists on his pitiable and helpless thralldom to a middle-school dame sans merci. In our cultural mythology, love doesn’t just conquer all, but it justifies all sorts of bad behavior, too. In fact, the novel offers - among much else - a critique of the privileged status that Western society has accorded to romantic passion since the Middle Ages. Through the power of Nabokov’s art, the book’s narrator, a middle-aged man fixated on a pubescent girl, does all he can to present himself as the besotted victim in a doomed romance. Consider an example from recent literature: I find Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” funny, complex, beautifully written, endlessly rereadable. In the arts, this can result in near hysteria at the discovery of sexism, racism or exoticism in the masterpieces of earlier ages. Absolutism, whether political, aesthetic or religious, leads to favoring those who conform to our beliefs and condemning everyone else.

Henry huggins collection