Re-reading Radio Fifth Grade for funzies

[conuly]

The humor still holds up. The situation doesn't.

The plot is that our main characters are fifth graders, and their new teacher - fresh out of school! - is all fired up about exploration and learning. So she assigns ten random trivia questions every week for the kids to discover the answers to. And since they can't figure out how to discover the answers (I'm with the kids on this one), they ask them on their radio show as a quiz, under the theory that nobody is going to call in the answers unless they know them, right?

Except their teacher would like to listen to their radio show, because she's supportive like that, and shenanigans ensue.

You can see the problem here. This only works if the answer to everything is not "Meh, let's just google it."

I don't usually support editing books for reprint, but I think the only way this book would work today is if a few carefully dated references are added into the book to make it clear that it is now Historical Fiction. Otherwise it just doesn't make sense to the young modern reader. Pity, really.

******

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Comments

[gingicat]

Oh, I don’t know, there are many Google-able questions on Quora.

[conuly]

Okay, but they still wouldn't need to worry that much about their teacher figuring it out. I mean, unless they made a habit of posting all the questions at once, and even then, she wouldn't know who they were.

[oloriel]

Today, it would be Podcast Fifth Grade? ;)

I recently thought about that when re-reading one of my teenage favourites (The Zigzag Kid by David Grossmann). At one point, the protagonist is challenged by his friend to a... knowledge about Spanish bullfighting competition, I think you might call it. So Nono copies bits of text from an encyclopedia, and his caretaker calls the Spanish embassy for more information, and asks a friend who's a flight attendant to buy postcards of bullfights the next time she's in Spain. And so on. And none of that would make a lot of sense to modern young readers. "Duh, why don't they just Google it?"

(But the story is set in the 1960s, so I guess one can expect modern readers to realise that it's Historical. XD)

[conuly]

Podcast Fifth Grade would lose all the hijinks related to the fact that this is a LIVE SHOW, though.

[oloriel]

Hm. Liveblog Fifth Grade? ;)

Well, modern updates often don't work. So I guess a note about the time when it's set would be more helpful, on the whole!

[elf]

The plot could maybe be updated by the teacher giving out puzzles or pictures instead of trivia questions - kids could have their own YouTube or Twitch livestream (erm, with an older sibling's help? Technically they have to be 13 for those*) trying to get answers.

* That would be why they don't expect the teacher to find them; she knows they can't have their own vidcast. But one of their college-age siblings has a gaming show and has figured out how to work the puzzles/pictures/whatever into them. (Works great, until one of the other teachers mentions that all the kids are into Pirate Heroes these days, and she goes online to find out what that is.)

[archersangel]

about Europe's strange border anomaly, there are a few places along the US/canada border that are split between the two.

[conuly]

No, that still doesn't work. It's a school radio show, and the rest of the shenanigans involve them trying to offload their sponsor's parrot (he runs a pet store) and a bully writing increasingly inane stories about kittens and intimidating any student who doesn't seem sufficiently fannish enough. The classroom floor, we're told, is covered with kitty litter.

[conuly]

I've heard!