What is appropriate in childrens literature?

[zanz1bar]

So following an AIBU thread about Harry Potter. The Op says 'the themes and ideas in the books - particularly the later ones - are entirely inappropriate and largely incomprehensible for KS1 children.'

What are these themes and ideas?

With Snow White . Hansel and Gretel, and The Little Mermaid offering themes of child abuse, murder, warped ideas of beauty and women . I wonder what horrors Harry Potter could have?

If treated with intelligent and subtle compassion most themes and ideas are dealt with as common place in childrens literature?

If anything its hard to find a plain story with out an opening chapter of death and destruction of the parents and a harrowing tale of a childs journey through life.
Cest la vie?

The Three Jays, Jill and multiduninous Pullen-Thompsons, I think. I was a totally omnivorous reader, and was always desperate for books. So at the same time I was reading the Brontes, Jane Austen and various books written by the 19th centuary colonial administrators of Malaya. It was a slightly odd upbringing, but I have one hell of a vocabulary!

The sexual element in HP is fairly mild, I'd say. In book 5 he finally gets to take a girl to a coffee shop and try out a chaste kiss. As far as I can work out, he is still a virgin at the end of the series. We certainly aren't treated to any insights in his sex life, apart from some excruciatingly bad writing concerning his feelings of jealousy ("the creature in his chest roared with approval").

God, the Roly-Poly Pudding still scares me! Honestly, it terrified me - I still have the emotional scars. Hated Jeremy Fisher too - the bit where the minnows nibble his toes and the stickleback jumps all over him.

My tendency is to go with DCs reactions. For example, DD went through a phase of being scared by Owl Babies - I think because the mother flies off and they're left alone in the dark wood. But no-one would say that's inappropriate for young children would they. On the other hand, she loves some of the (adapted) Grimms' Fairy Tales that we have - Hansel and Gretel for example doesn't seem to bother her at all.

I think suggesting that death, sex and destruction is inappropriate in children's literature is denying that those things exist in real life and they will become exposed to them at some point. Better to have that exposure in safety through a book than for real!

I agree with Pixie. Dd is 8 and I am thinking that I will let her read the first Harry Potter soon. I have them all. However the others I will hold fire on.

A 7/8 year old reading Harry Potter when it first came out would have had to have waited 12 months before the next one was published therefore by book 4 they would be about 11/12 - secondary school age.

The books grew with the original readers.