larkandkatydid:
cir-c:
eldritchtouched:
larkandkatydid:
larkandkatydid:
larkandkatydid:
There is genuinely no such thing as an inappropriate book for a child.
People in the tags who read Clan of the Cave Bear or Flowers in the Attic, but did you fucking die? You are fine like every other kid exposed to Jondalar’s turgid, upright member was fine. These are clearly ideal books for nine year olds because so many very alive and unharmed former nine year olds read the shit out of them and many adults find them boring.
Would you really be such a John Hughes adult kind of hypocrite as to rip the inspiring tale of Ayla, who invented aspirin, knitting and cunnilingus during the last ice age out of an elementary schooler’s hand?
If you don’t want kids to read a book, don’t allow it to portray a child’s actual, relateable anxieties around puberty, sex, adulthood and their parents in the most high gothic way possible. This is like preventing incest by locking your adolescent grandchildren in a small room with no access to non-family members.
I’m pretty sure a decent chunk of people who want to censor stuff tend not to have read what they wish to censor, or else they lack the media literacy of why a writer might include one thing and not another or, like, the point of the thing. Or simply assholes wishing to try to keep as much control over their children as possible to abuse them.
Another thing with ‘don’t let kids read/engage with certain kinds of media’ is also interesting with what they pick for censorship. Aside from blatant bigotry (like all the attempts to label queer anything as pornography), a big thing that shows up is “stories that have sexual abuse/rape/etc. in it.” They act like there aren’t children who’ve dealt with stuff like that. Even though the stats absolutely tell a different tale.
The implication being like the attempts to ban sex ed. So that kids don’t realize they’re being abused by people around them and speak up…
Just because a child can read doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for them to read every single book that exists. Children can access the internet, but you would agree that a lot of websites are not appropriate for them?
A book that isn’t age appropriate for a child can actually turn them away from reading btw. I wouldn’t recommend Anna Karénine to an 8yo child or have them read it, obviously.
Serious question: Would you let a 10yo read A Little Life?
Sure it does. Thats exactly what it mean. And as I am beginning A Little Life I cannot help but think that it’s exactly the kind of lurid high gothic that many ten year olds would love. Also, I mean what I say when I say that it’s a great moral crime to deny kids access to books. It will not hurt a 10 year old to read A Little Life. It will hurt a 10 year old to be around the kind of adult who won’t let them do so.
But, forget A Little Life, I think the idea that one should censor Anna Kerenina because it’s hard is perhaps the most depressing, anti-intellectual nonsense that I’ve seen on post full of anti-intellectual nonsense….and also so typical of the kind of twisted anti-literature attitude that I see coming from a lot of educators these days, and I can only assume it’s because people who don’t like to read have been put in charge of reading. Why are people so convinced that it will harm a child if she encounters a book that’s too difficult or too weird or just a book that they don’t like? There seems to be this idea that an offputting book will spook a child somehow and I just do not understand this!
Books are not like movies or the internet or TV or the other forms of media that don’t require the same kind of concentration and intellectual skill that reading a book does! And again, I think this is just what happens when people who don’t read start to have opinions about reading. Again, what if you stopped doing that? What if you stopped thinking of fun new ways to take books away from child bookworms instead of just dealing with your weird jealousy about kids who won more Pizza Hut coupons than you.
Also like… A kid can just put a book down?
I grew up in a house with lots of books and not always a tv, and no restrictions on what I could read. If something was too hard or too confusing or too boring or too gross or too uncomfortable or whatever… I put it back and picked up another and absolutely nothing happened to me, either from the bad choice book or from not finishing it in favor of another book that was more fun??
(via drdemonprince)