Is To Kill A Mockingbird okay to give to my ten year old?

"He also likes Anthony Horowitz but they aren't challenging reading wise - good stories though."

Sorry- being argumentative again! What do you mean by challenging? If he's happily reading Alex Ryder he is a person who can read- he doesn't need to be challenged. Just let him read lots of age appropriate books-which will, of course include some adult books-let him get on with it.

"Do you have to turn everything into an argument?"

No. But I feel very strongly about this. I don't see why people who are rightly careful about film classifications don't think twice about the books they give their children to read. And TKAM is an adult book.

DS has been ploughing through the Skulduggery Pleasant series for the last year or so and loves them. Like Harry Potter, they become more complex and darker as the characters age and the books progress. About to finish the last one and he's gutted there will be no more! They are far better than the usual science fi/fantasy drivel churned out by some young adult authors.

Terry Pratchett is becoming a firm favourite too, although I have to explain what the joke it sometimes when DS can see something is meant to be funny but can't quite work out what.

You don't get to classify someone else's work just to suit your needs.

Harper Lee didn't write it for children.

I read it around that age, re read it as an adult. I read lots of adult books as a child, I don't see the harm in it.

I'd have thought this book would be better suited post-puberty for some ingrained, unexplored rationale I've just come up with!

I was about 14 when I read it. It wasn't traumatising at all. However, to really appreciate the book, it would be better to have a true understanding of the themes. Rape, racism etc, which I wouldn't have gotten at 10 years old.

Of course, 'kids today' and all that. Maybe he has a better grip on these things than I did in the late 80s/early 90s.

But no, personally, I'd leave it. Plenty more age appropriate reads out there.

It's not a children'a book. It's an adult book, taught at GCSE level. Is Of Mice and Men a children's book? The Colour Purple? The Handmaid's Tale (taught at A Level, in schools)?

Where do you draw the line?

"Certainly it's taught in schools so can technically be classed as a children's book,"

So any GCSE text is "a children's book"?

I would definitely let him read it.

I think it'd be a great way to start having conversations with him about racism, sex and consent and prejudice.

Go for it!

I would, and see if he finds it interesting.

I read a huge range of things - my parents had the attitude that if I wasn't old enough to understand it I would just get bored and find something else to read. I never found myself traumatised, but on re-reading when older I often found a lot went over my head. But generally I'd try a chapter or two and find it boring if it was too old for me.

When I was about 14 I found a copy of Lolita at the second hand book stall, and as I'd heard about it tried to buy it. The man made me come back with my Mum to give permission I found it quite boring (and still did when I re-read as an adult)...

Agree with when hitler stole pink rabbit and I had another book called the endless steppe about a young girl being sent to the camps in Siberia. My ds loved all of Derek Landy. He began with the skullduggery series, then the malificent series and will start the new series demon road after I read it (the salesman said it was for an older child so I'll see).

I read it the summer I turned ten. I was bored and my mom handed it to me and said read this. I said I didn't want to read a book about killing birds. She told me to just read it.

It didn't go over my head and I wasn't at all traumatized. In fact, it became one of those books I read again and again. I just really liked the characters, particularly Scout and Dill, and the sense of time and place.

I don't get this giving adult books to children thing. Why?????

How about When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit if you want something that raises adult themes?

The David Almond books are excellent for more able readers because they are quite enigmatic. They require a bit of thought on the part of the reader!

My two older DDs, both very keen readers, read it around 12/13, as I did ( a v. long time ago!). I think if it were written now it might be as a YA novel. 10 is too young, I think. He will get more out of it in a couple of years.

I don't think I'd baulk at the race stuff for a 10 year old but (and I'm one of the much-pilloried guardianistas round these parts), the that mention of the rape during the trial would be at best going over a 10-yos head, and at worst would be an introduction into the idea of non-consent.

I probably wouldn't, although I will caveat that I think it's one of the greatest books of the last century and I don't have a 10 year old.

There isn't actually a rape, no, but that's what Tom Robinson is on trial for. It's alluded to. That's bad enough.

It's really unsuitable.

I read it young because it was on my bookshelf in my bedroom at my nan's house. Most of it went over my head and when I read it again at secondary school I was quite shocked at what I read.

No I really wouldn't. It's very much an adult book.

I read it in school a couple of years older than that and it was good to be guided through it by my English teacher. If you can, perhaps read it together but I wouldnt let him read it on his own. There is a lot of context that needs unpacked. At age 10 I had picked up on themes like rape and racisim due to a voracious appetite for sci-fi books that were well outside my parents knowledge. But they had a very different context to TKAMB.