AIBU to let DS 7 read Agatha Christie's Poirot?

[Mysterylovingboy]

DS7 has read lots of Famous Five, Five Find-Outers, Malory Towers, Just William etc. This weekend he's been reading Poirot's casebook which contains short murder mysteries.

I'm just wondering if these are actually suitable, given his age. I remember reading them in late juniors, but he's still in the infants and they are, after all, about murders, though they're not gruesome and the baddie always gets caught and punished so hopefully they're not morally bad (occasional racism, classism and sexism - which we will discuss - aside).

AIBU to let him read them, and if so, can people suggest alternatives please?

He's not really into fantasy or magic or animal stories. IIRC he's got a reading age of 12+ and enjoys Horrible Histories, Asterix, Obelisk, Enid Blyton's mystery and school stories (not SS, which are "boring and too slow"), Just William, some Jacqueline Wilson (avoiding the scarier ones). He wants to read Biggles, but I've said that's too violent.

@Justanotherlurker

Imagine trying to dictate what a child should and shouldn't read and not let the child form their own opinion.

It comes across as a tick box of acceptable books that will amount to nothing in the long term.

This is peak Mr's Bucket MN classist, 'I'm working class and always voted labour' comedy

Suitable material for a young child, what a shocking concept

I can't remember anything remotely unsuitable in Agatha Christie!

There are scenes of torture in Harry Potter, some pretty nasty and yacky stuff in horrible histories...

I'd stay away from Stephen King but Poirot is fine.

How about Iain Serraillier, The Silver Sword, or Erich Kästner, Emil and the Detectives, or Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped? I remember enjoying those.

For me, I'd suggest that things like adultery, or WW2, and things like arsenic or class distinctions would go over his head, and he wouldn't get the benefit of understanding such nuances.

@Notjustanymum

On a slightly different tack, you could try the Adventure series, by Willard Price. These are about two teenagers who go on animal-collecting adventures with their naturalist father. They normally end up having to outwit some villains along the way. I remember enjoying these books as a 9-year old (by which time I was also reading Dickens, Tolkien, CS Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe and G. K. Chesterton).

Great descriptions of wildlife and lovely, evocative natural habitats, but the human 'natives' are cringe, even sometimes dying for or sometimes trying to kill the wholesome Brits, who are essentially toxic masculine hunters, even if they put animals into captivity rather than killing them (though rejoicing in the high tech mass slaughter of edible fish was a theme of Underwater Adventure).

@PineappleWilson

For me, I'd suggest that things like adultery, or WW2, and things like arsenic or class distinctions would go over his head, and he wouldn't get the benefit of understanding such nuances.

There are plenty of children in the U.K. with family in the forces or family who fled war in this or recent generations. It would be great to develop empathy with peers through reading about WW2, etc.

Silver Fin

I can remember quite clearly at about 9 or 10 reading a reference to Victorian laudanum (probably not in fiction actually) and then slightly later realising from something else I read that cocaine was legal in the UK circa WW1, then reading that opium was a vice of Sherlock Holmes, and learning about American prohibition etc, and puzzling out the whole business of drugs that I knew were now illegal through this historical lens. I think sometimes that’s a much better, “safer” way for youngsters to come across issues; At a remove from their own lives, safely in another culture or era. As a PP said it gives things a cartoonish quality. I was fine with Sherlock Holmes & Agatha Christie, for instance, at a time when Grange Hill still scared me.

Class issues have already come up both at home, and when reading Five Find-Outers (he wanted to know why the children couldn't make friends with the gardener's boy next door, and why Ernie had to eat in the kitchen whilst the other children had to eat in the nursery).

As for WW2, his great grandparents survived concentration camps, and he's read Horrible Histories WW2 etc so he's well aware. In last night's Poirot reading, Captain Hastings wrote that he'd been in the Somme and DS instantly said "oh yes, that was one of the biggest battles of WW1 and thousands of men died". He's like flypaper for facts. So I'm not too worried about that, and the fact that the other set of GGPs were refugees, for example, gives him empathy for those fleeing war today.

@SirSamuelVimes - Given your name it's worth asking about Terry Pratchett. It's fantasy (which he's not keen on) but IIRC it's more of a satire on real life, which he might enjoy. Haven't read them for a while, but seem to remember it would be worth waiting a few years?

Willard Price - good to know the issues, he's not keen on animal-related, which has knocked out a lot of the Michael Morpurgo books.

Alexander McCall Smith - I will definitely check out the children's books, hadn't been aware. No 1 detective agency has a rape described from the pov of the victim IIRC, in one of the early books, I remember as it put me off reading more though I like his Scotland Street (not for DS though).

Lone Pine - great idea, I've been looking to pick some up cheaply but crying as my DP seem to have got rid of mine and I had nearly the whole set, including hardbacks.

We've been out today and got a Marsh Road Mystery which looks good, and the children's Sherlock Holmes. If he likes them I'll maybe transition him onto the adult versions which we have anyway. Think we'll be spending a lot of summer in travel quarantine, so stocking up on lots to take away.

I just skim read a children's version and proper version of Sherlock Holmes for research

The childrens version had all the drug references removed. And the language was less flowery. But the plot was the same.

@sweeneytoddsrazor

Reading age doesn't always equate to comprehension though, so you do need to check any books first.

I couldn't agree more. Just because a 7 year old can read the words, doesn't mean he had the emotional maturity to comprehend th. It is incredibly foolhardy to equate his reading age to his emotional age. He is a young child.

Yes definitely worth leaving the Pratchett for a few years if it's the satirical nature of it that would most interest him. I think that at that age I would only have picked up on the surface, fantasy elements, even though I was an intelligent and voracious reader. If you think he'd enjoy the satire, and depending on your feelings about religion, I'd say start with Small Gods at about age 12. It's a stand alone one, rather than one of the narrative/character strands, and is probably the best, cynical dissection of organised religion I have ever read.

If he decides he's alright with the fantasy elements, I'd recommend starting with the night watch ones strand. Start at Guards, Guards! and work chronologically through all the ones that have Vimes et al.

His technical comprehension is excellent (he often offers an excited synopsis of what he's been reading on his own and it's usually spot on), but his emotional maturity is what gives me pause. That's why I'm definitely not letting him near the contemporary YA stuff full of teenage romances etc, it feels a bit worse than some historical arsenic though I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the time/distance, as PPs have said.

He's quite a deep thinker, and the school describes him as an 'old soul'. But still there's some stuff that's just not a good idea. I've got lots of great suggestions from this thread so will steer him towards those and make sure we read the older stuff together.

Meant to say you could start with Guards Guards a bit younger - probably 9 or 10?

I tend to think it's a shame to start too early as they miss so much and then often think they've "done" with the books when they've only understood a very small, surface reading of the texts.

I wouldn't do Terry Pratchett yet. You'd miss so many of the references (cultural and to other stories).

The Tiffany Aching ones are more for children but the fourth one has somebody miscarrying because they've been beaten by their father which I don't think is suitable until older.

The Bromeliad (Truckers, Diggers and Wings) should be ok though I think. It's a bit like the Borrowers.

Thanks @SirSamuelVimes I'll keep Small Gods up my sleeve for a few years time. Not that he needs much assistance with a cynical dissection of organised religion... Mr Logic already has some quite developed thoughts on that, much to the dismay of the Catholic DGPs.

Yes absolutely agree about reading too young also risks missing all the nuances, and not falling in love with them - I read the Brontes at a too young an age and it really put me off them, especially Wuthering Heights.

Bromeliad etc sounds good!

@Mysterylovingboy

Has he read the Barney (sometimes known as the 'R' mystery series, as every title begins with an 'R') by Enid Blyton?

I loved these when I was a child, especially the Rilloby Fair Mystery, which is a cracking locked-door mystery worthy of Jonathan Creek!

I don't know how easily available they are these days, but there is a set on eBay.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194157804758

Oh he will definitely enjoy it then - the Omnians definitely have a lot in common with inquisition era Catholicism!

The only thing with some of the Christies are the pretty nasty anti antisemitism - although that may have been edited from newer editions. Try the Hardy Boys and Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. The Willard Price adventure stories have also been revived fairly recently. Also still as comic as when they were written in the seventies- try Helen Cresswells Bagthorpe Saga

I was a very precocious reader and I was reading my mums early Jilly Cooper at a tender age. I do still vividly member being totally traumatised by James Herberts "The Rats" when I was about 9

If he likes history then maybe the Georgette Heyer historical novels (eg Royal Escape) would be good? They are very well researched. Or Jean Plaidy?

Another vote for Swallows and Amazons and also the Percy Jackson books.

If you can get them second hand then Cynthia Harnett is an excellent historical writer for children - I think the Wool Pack is the only one in print currently.

I would also push the classics at this stage - has he read Alice in Wonderland, Secret Garden, Ballet Shoes, Children of the New Forest etc?

I read them at that age and now have read them all.
Ones to start with, I'd say more gentle ones like Why Didn't they Ask Evans, The Sittaford Mystery, A Murder is Annouced.
Avoid And then There Were None for now, too scary and there are a few which are a bit sexuqlly suggestive, like Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, Body in thr Library.

We read Sherlock Holmes and watched Poirot on TV at that age. Loved it.

I'd not see a problem with it. The very thinsg that makes some people dismiss Christie as a writer - her lack of in depth characterisation, "golden age bubble" setting & the puzzle nature of 1920's detective fiction; are exactly why it not have a problem with him reading Christie or Dorothy L Sayers (though Gaudy Night is prob too wordy & the phonetic Scots on Five Red Herrings still makes my head hurt). I still go back them both as relaxation reading and he sounds like he'll ask you if he doesn't understand any of it. The deaths in Potter & a lot of Morpurgo books are more emotional / nastier than the deaths that start of these "puzzles" (I'd include Sherlock Holmes in this category too.)
My DD1 also prefers murder mysteries to other books as she likes the mental gymnastics & the fact that there is always a "proper ending" so she doesn't feel she wasted her time reading it. She did enjoy the Murder Unladylike series too.

@Mysterylovingboy Terry Pratchett does do some books aimed at children, my son liked Johnny and the bomb and I think there’s another book with the same characters. We listened to Truckers as an audiobook on the way to holiday this year, we all enjoyed it.

Silver sword and Castle in the Attic are also fantastic books.