to have confiscated my six year old's horrible history book

[Tholeonagain]

DS, who has just turned six, was given a copy of the Horrible History 'England' book. Lovely, I thought. History is fascinating & I'm keen to encourage his interest in it. I flicked it open to have a quick glance through, expecting to come across a bit of toilet humour. The first paragraph I read, entitled 'deadly dads' was about parents, in AD 6 something or other, eating their own children during a famine. Actually found that pretty traumatic reading myself.. not something I want to put in the hands of my (probably averagely sensitive) six year old! Am I being ott?? Missing something?? What ages are these books aimed at?

I read them as a child and have also grown into a thoughtful, socially aware, and sensible adult

I'm very pleased for you Bear

YABU. This is ridiculous. They're HISTORY books!

I will fess up, I am that parent who told the teacher they should be banned from the school library to protect her PFB. He was a sensitive boy. Bet they all had a good chortle in the staff room.

In my defence PFB has grown up without much interest in horror films or nasty stuff like GTA. He is a bit of a GoT fan though.

All depends on the child. I mean, these books are aimed at children so to say their unsuitable I would say is a bit far fetched but then if you have a very sensitive child then something like this might not be for them.

When I was 10-11 yrs old I started reading Stephen King novels because I found them imaginative, intriguing and thoroughly enjoyable (and I still do. When my teacher at school saw me reading Misery they raised it with my parents as they thought it unsuitable for me to read (and obviously they were right to at least raise this I guess), my parents explained that as I was quite an advanced reader and always had been that I found most books children my age were reading to be boring and unstimulating, and that as Stephen King is a brilliant novelist they were quite happy for me to read his works because it kept me interested in reading rather than the TV......My point here, if there is one, is that it's important for children not only to read but to genuinely be passionate and interested in the material they read, you might not necessarily like the material yourself but as long as it's not grossly inappropriate for them then I'd say YABU to take the book away. If anything you should maybe look to expand on their interest in it!!

YABU for your reasons, but YANBU for confiscating them.

I hate Horrible Histories. They are the educational equivalent of junk food. Children will do themselves no favours by reading them. They reduce a perfectly interesting subject to burping, farting, murders and toilets, and children who are introduced to history through them have no incentive to continue onto books that don't sex up the subject but do teach them stuff worth knowing.

I suppose there is the odd child who goes onto become a history buff, having been introduced history via Terry Deary's books (which, by the way, he himself describes as "entertainment" rather than "educational") just as I suppose there is the odd child who goes onto like vegetables having been introduced to them via crisps. However, I suspect there are rather more children who can't be bothered because they have never been taught to find history or other subjects interesting themselves, and don't learn to persevere without a reference to flatulence every other page.

It pains me that HH have even found their way into my DD's school when she learned about the Romans last year. She knows absolutely fuck all compared to what I and my classmates knew at her age (30 years ago) on anything factual. Compared to the books I got to read, the stuff made available to her by the local library and the school tends to assume that children have a low boredom threshold. It is all very low-content, high-entertainment, and it makes for low-content, highly boring children.

As for Deary's comments on libraries, they are indefensible. He says we wnt things for free, assuming that libraries are free. Of course they aren't, they are paid through rates, which people either pay directly or are indirectly factored in as part of their rents charged by landlords who do pay rates.

OP, burn the fucking books!

Yanbu at all.

DS is almost 8 and I wouldn't want him reading that. He knows Hansel and Gretl and Roald Dahl aren't real so to me it isn't the same thing.

I like this professional historian's response to Terry Deary's library comments -

www.marcmorris.org.uk/2013/02/a-letter-to-terry-deary.html?m=1

The TV series is done without his involvement I think, and is better.

Yanbu.

I don't think saying "it's a history book" makes it any better. I wouldn't have wanted him to read about, say, the Holocaust or slave trade or any of history's various serial killers in excruciating detail at five or six. I believe in my kids having all the information, but not all at once.

I believe history should not be dumbed down

I agree. But I also think the news shouldn't be dumbed down and I wouldn't let my children watch coverage of people bring burned to death, etc.

I never understand why people want to make it so desirable. If my mother had confiscated a book at that age I would have made sure that I got hold of a friend's copy to see what the fuss was about! I certainly wouldn't have told my mother,so it was much better that she knew.
Children love the horrid histories and they are not looking at them through an adult view point.

He, as in Deary, does come across as unreasonable. My Ds has only been to the cinema once in his eleven years because we can't afford it. He relies on the local and school library for books.

People have this naive faith that banning something means they don't read it.

I think it is the real tragedies as titillation & entertainment aspect that I find so unpleasant. That is what distinguishes them from Hansel & Gretel & Roald Dahl. I won't be attempting to ban these for the whole of his primary school career (he isn't desperate now, a lot of other birthday excitement going on) but I will talk to him about why I don't like them.

My dad read them at the same age and I have kept them for ds. It actually got her interested in history and now she reads loads on non history books too. It really depends on the child.

children who are introduced to history through them have no incentive to continue onto books that don't sex up the subject but do teach them stuff worth knowing

Not been the case here at all. Ds3 started with them - still loves them- & now reads anything historical he can find. He certainly knows a lot more about history than his brother who has confined himself to what he learned at school (which isn't much & he's dropping history this year).

Total bollocks that children don't then go on to like other history (or whatever) books. I was far more of a fan of horrible science as a chlild than HH, but I found when beginning science GCSEs that a lot of the topics we were studying at GCSE, I had a working knowledge of because of these books.

The whole junk food argument is daft. Like saying that children who start reading Rainbow Fairies want be able to progress to "proper" literature, which is evidently not true.

I think YABU - I loved the HH books as a child (from 7 onwards I think) and really enjoyed them - was a good introduction to history, remember discussing them with my Mum, and as I got older I read more around the subject, did history gcse and still enjoy a good historical documentary on the telly. I think they're a great way to engage reluctant readers, but also good to introduce kids to history. Yes it's a bit bloodthirsty but as people have said kids don't attach the same emotions to it - and some fairy tales are pretty gruesome!

Also, OP I need to thank you - I'm pregnant with my first and you've reminded me to start raiding charity shops to build up a collection of books that I loved when I was little, HH will be making the cut ;)