To think Goodnight Mr Tom is not a nice book for a 9 year old

[Mintychoc1]

My mum lives next door to me, and likes to read 9 year old DS a bedtime story. I’m very grateful for her help, he likes the time with his gran, and she loves reading to him - all good. She’s retired English teacher, so knows about literature, and likes to read him timeless classics.

She’s been reading him Goodnight Mr Tom, and they’re on the last chapter. DS told me it was very sad, so I googled it and read the plot summary. Blimey it’s horrible! Child abuse, a baby is starved to death, another child dies, abusive mother kills herself - all against a backdrop of WW2 misery.

Surely this is unnecessarily nasty for a 9 year old?

And we’re constantly told how damaging Xbox games like fortnite are! But this seems so much more disturbing, as it’s more real.

Am I missing something ?

We read it in primary - year 4 if I recall. I think it's fine.

Sad and inappropriate aren't the same thing.

I read this around that age - I loved it.

And I agree with a PP who said that sad/upsetting and inappropriate are not the same thing!

What did your DS actually say apart from describing the book as very sad? Surely you'd take your lead from how he actually feels? Also if your mum is an English teacher I am surprised that you are so surprised by this book, that you've never heard of either the book or the film of the same name (which is repeated on TV regularly) and that you didn't do plenty of reading yourself as a child, so out of many people you're probably better placed to see the bigger perspective of children's literature?

Marianne Dreams and the creepy stones was the story that gave me nightmares as a kid. I still loved it though.

Mr Tom is a lovely book. Sad but also uplifting and hopeful. It's an honest depiction of the trials of life but the central message is the redeeming power of love.

I think you're missing the point of the story, OP.

I read it when I was about that age at school.

I agree with others. I suggest you read it rather than going with the synopsis.

I think I read this about that age too, and the part I remember is that Willie got to stay with Mr Tom. The tragic parts had much less of an impact on me than e.g. Matthew dying in "Anne of Green Gables". Oh God, and I also read a Victorian novel called "A Peep Behind the Scenes". Sobbed for HOURS. Don't think any of it did me any harm.

I lapped up that sort of horror at 9 OP. Plenty of kids do.

I loved Carrie's War as a child. I don't even remember it being that upsetting.

I don’t know - it just seems to me like a lot of children’s books are very dark, but because they’re classics no one questions it.

In many ways that is the function of children's literature; To introduce them to sad, scary things in a safe way, with friendly, kind characters to lead them through it.

I read that book as a child and it haunted me for years because I had a shit childhood. I wasn’t aware enough to realise but it touched me because of how things were at home.

I wouldn’t let my 9 year old read it because he is too busy enjoying his innocence. When he’s a little older then yes I would but I would read it with him.

It was our class reader when I was in Y4 (in the early 90s). It taught me so much about WW2 that I wouldn’t have learnt as “humanly” from factual books, and started off a life-long love of historical fiction. I’ve read that, and others by Michelle Magorian, again and again.

It is a beautifully written book. I remember feeling elated by the (happy) ending.

I think he’s upset by it. He’s a sensitive little kid who worries about people being hurt. He came into my bed this morning to tell me all about it, how sad it is, and how gran cries the whole time she’s reading it!

DS is no stranger to the harsh realities of life. He knows about his uncle’s suicide (long before he was born), and his beloved grandad is very ill with cancer.

I don’t know, maybe I’m projecting my own desire to avoid misery in fiction, when there seems to be plenty in real life.

I read it as an adult and thought it was a bit crap. Basically it's Heidi with child abuse.

Now Marianne Dreams was really terrifying. I saw a BBC TV adaptation as a child but couldn't find the book til I was an adult. It still read well (in a rather old fashioned way) and the "open" ending was way more frightening.

Literature should be about real life, should tell the truth, should give you tools to deal with life.

Escapism doesn’t really teach you anything.

Escapism doesn't need to teach you anything, the whole point is to be able to check out of 'real life' a while and vanish into the world created by an author's imagination (or filmmaker, or game designer etc). Not everything needs to be a teaching or learning moment, some things can - and should - be about joy.

The overriding impact of school reading for me was a feeling of deep gratitude that a love of reading had been instilled before they got their hands on me; by the time we had covered people being decapitated, babies starving, child abuse, domestic violence, rape and murder all under the guise of education, I'd have truly hated reading if I hadn't loved it before. There were times I really hated that any book I read played like a movie in my mind, I cannot count the number of nightmares and lost nights' sleep those books caused.

If your mum's an English teacher how can you have never read it? I thought most schools had it on the curriculum. I don't think it's inappropriate for a 9 year old.

My Dd1 did ww2 in p4 last year and they read it and watched parts so almost all were aged 8 Dd1 and another boy still 7. None were traumatised and all seemed to get a lot out of it. Dd1 asked to watch it again if it comes on

OP, my six year old is also sensitive so I understand your concern. I foolishly read him "The Dancing Bear" by Michael Morpurgo without checking the ending. He was really upset by the ending (so much so that I made up an alternative ending for him) but after we'd talked it through over the following day, he was fine with it. Personally, I think that it is better for kids to absorb and process these emotions in a diluted form through fiction than to have to deal with them for the first time in real life - but I know everyone has a different approach.

Andro That's my experience of school reading too, and like you I'm extremely glad I already loved reading before that kind of text was introduced. When you see words as pictures in your head it's harder to gloss over the horrible parts of books.

Threads like this always end up with “Well, I read Titus Androbicus as an embryo and it didn’t do me any harm!” stuff!
There’s no need to rush. There are lots of books and lots of time.

I read the book and watched the film around 8 and never had a problem with it. I'd rewatch it every time it came on TV. I fondly remember one Easter morning watching it in bed with a chocolate egg waiting for my parents to get ready - we were going to visit family later.

*Andronicus

if you have a very sensitive child, it's very healthy for them to start getting to grips with the world through literature and fiction. It's exposure in a controlled environment.

Use this as an opportunity to show how humans have an amazing capacity for empathy and resilience. Look for the positive. I have an anxious child and use the news and books to gently focus on the amazing good that is demonstrated in difficult times and the survival aspect.

The comparison with an x-box game is shocking really. Violence with no consequences, no empathy, no context is dangerous and desensitising. Growing up in the 70s and 80's the news was a fixture in many homes and we grew up understanding there were difficulties in the world, that many people lived in very challenging circumstances, there were good governments, bad govermnents etc. Now the news is something mainly kept for adults, isolating children from the real world and real situations. Same with literature.

GrouchyKiwi

A Tale of Two Cities (Y5) and Of Mice and Men (GCSE) were responsible for some very memorable (for all the wrong reasons) images. I'll acknowledge the skill of both authors, but I could have done without the pictures.

I find your comparison with violent computer games really odd. In those, the player instigates violent acts that have no real-life consequences.

In books like this, the real-life consequences of violence, including the secondary, pervavisve, long-lasting, brutalising and de-stabilising effects of war and violence are exposed, for the everyday horrors that they are.

Those two things seem to me to be opposites.