I just found out Bob read George Orwell (by choice) when he was in grade school. Sixth grade. Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, both.
That explains a lot.
I asked him, “What do you remember about reading Nineteen Eighty-Four?”
He said, “I remember thinking how scary it was that our government was beginning to go in the direction that the book went.”
Hrmm. When I was in sixth grade, I don’t recall knowing (or caring) enough about our government to have any sort of opinion on it one way or another that didn’t belong to my parents.
compu-diva.com 
I read Orwell when I was about 14. I was given a collected edition for my birthday and I still have it. but my favourite piece of Orwell writing is an essay about shooting an elephant.
have you read it?
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No, I’ve never read it! I’ll bet I could find it in the Gutenburg project. I’ll check.
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“And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”
http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/shootelephant.htm
A whole lot of history and human nature captured in a short essay.
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my purpose in life has been achieved!
isn’t it a wonderful essay? how can one not love Orwell?
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brilliant – thank you nm, and bc (and, of course, Bob) for tracking the Orwell essay…
oh, if our President could read and comprehend… maybe we can make it into a cartoon?
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