to think that Charlotte's Web is inappropriate for a 4 year old ?

[OnEdge]

My DD 4 has just started in reception. Each morning they choose a book to read and bring it home and we read it to her. I am not familiar with this book. So we all settled down and I began reading it to my 1,2 and 4 year old. I had to really quickly sensor it. I think that the threat of death to the pig is a bit much for a 4 year old to understand, there is reference to a man fetching his axe to kill the baby pig. Also, she is trying to grasp English, and this is an American book. Had I read it out word for word, she would not have understood much of it, and the bit she understood would have disturbed her.

Do you think IABU ? Or is it inappropriate for her ?

Mmm - I can see the need to protect your child from fat, axe weilding Americans - they are a danger, & increasing in number round my way, as are wicked fairy God-mothers, gollums, witches & their bastardly enticing gingerbread houses, under-bridge trolls, dragons & grandmother gobbling wolves.

It's a cruel world out there.

Bloody hell

So pom bears, fruit shoots, fat Americans, mitmoo, death and crap ham

Is there anything else I need to protect my kids from?

Hmmn? Depends on the child really.

My son would not be worried by reading it at 4. He was interested in death in quite an upbeat way. He can take a great deal of 'fact' and it won't bother him or cause him to worry. I think he's quite happy go lucky.

But my daughter at 4 - no way! She'd really really think about death.

We live in the country and dead animals are a part of the children's life. They all helped bury a sheep when the youngest was two. But all are sensitive and very considered about death - have lost 3 grandparents and an auntie in the last couple of years. In my experience children are interested and so long as you can be reassuring too, find books like Charlotte's Web (Which I think is beautiful) mush less upsetting than we do. My son said he was glad about pigs because he loves bacon. And also, would the pigs have cake when they got to heaven?

I remember my mum reading it to my sister and me, I was about 5 or 6 so my sister would've been 3 or 4. Lovely book, and as someone else said earlier on, it was Charlotte's love for her spider babies that shone through more than anything else in the book.

We use 'Templeton' as a way to describe if we are full now, for example after Xmas dinner we'd say ' Wow, I'm all Templetoned out now' We LOVED that rat as kids, he was so funny!

It's a book she has presumably picked to be read together. I think you are being a tad precious about the whole thing. When DS was 5 the film Babe was out at the cinema and we went to see it. When Babes mother is taken away to be slaughtered he piped up "Well, that'snot very nice is it, we're vegetarians" - the cinema erupted

If she is worried or curious she will ask questions and that is a good way of introducing new idead, explaining about life and the world. I think perhaps becuase of your upbringing you are overcompensating and giving your DDthe childhood you think you should have had.

If you don't want to read the book, don't - simple really.
Must say I am a tad at the child not having a concept of America, or living on a farm and not having a understanding of the lifecycle- children need an awreness of the eider world and how they fit in to that.

Are you for real OP?

You sound rather deluded. Patronising your children is not going to be in their benefit in the long run.

YABU - I finished reading it recently to my 4 and 5 year old.

And..... (OP prepare yourself)........ i've also read them Bambi .

They're fine! They understood most (not all) of it, and i certainly didn't censor any content. IMO if they're old enough to ask a question about it, they're old enough to receive an answer.

DS has just listened to this as bedtime reading. He chose it himself from the library. He enjoyed it. IMO a far better story than * Horrid Henry.

Don't think I don't have standards re school books. I sent back a yr2 ORT book on WW2 when the next page wanted to tell us all about the 'Final Solution'.

think yabu = tho u know ur child and perhaps sh would be upset - wouldn't expect 4 yr olds generally to not enjoy story tho