What's an Adult -- Censorship of Children's Reading Material

[L. Inman]

No: HPFGUIDX 25185

catherine at c... wrote:

> I've been following this thread with interest,  (after I had got 
over 
> the initial shock that the whole "Are they children's books or 
not?" 
> argument had reared its head again <g>.)

I too follow these threads with interest, since I was also a child 
who buried herself in books of all types.  And now I'm finally 
tempted to put my two Knuts in.

Having always been an indiscriminate reader, I nevertheless 
understand the faint snobbery that people have toward books marketed 
to children (though I deplore it).  No, many stories written for a 
child audience are *not* complicated plotwise; the characters are 
people who can be understood fairly quickly; the endings are often 
neat and well-ordered.  But surely this is not limited to children's 
books.  And simplicity of plot, character, and ending, if done well, 
are not necessarily signs that the book is, well, not good enough for 
us adults.  For a single example, what about THE LITTLE PRINCE?

I agree with all that was said about the layers of HP and how 
children will understand more layers as they grow.  But the good 
explanations and arguments that have been made don't completely speak 
to the argument that usually starts these children's book threads:

a) Children's stories are not dark.
b) Harry Potter is a children's story.
c) Therefore, JKR will not make the ending dark.

Usually we quibble with (b) first.  But hey, why not quibble with 
(a), as some people occasionally do?  The Original Brothers Grimm -- 
chapbooks -- Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the schoolboy's prize -- TOM 
SAWYER and HUCKLEBERRY FINN, for crying out loud?  

Yes, I agree that all children are different.  But still I think that 
children actually have a higher capacity for absorbing *dark* things 
than adults do.  As a child I was frightened of death, but not nearly 
so much as I was of Ineffable Things.  There is nothing Ineffable 
about death, and children know this.  So if we persuade ourselves 
that JKR isn't going to make people die because it would be a 
betrayal to what children's literature is supposed to be like -- 
well, it might be a betrayal of the kind of literature that even 
children know to be insipid, but it wouldn't betray the older 
tradition of children's literature in the least.  

Well-meaning adults in earlier ages deliberately gave children dark 
things to read to put the fear of God into them; and the children, 
(if I know human nature at all) ate it up in a way the adults would 
not perhaps have anticipated or desired.  The same well-meaning 
adults of this age would keep such dark things away from their 
children, to preserve their fragile psyches, and this meets with a 
similar result.

I don't have a problem with people saying that Harry Potter is a 
children's story -- it has just about all the things that children 
(the unabashed swashbucklers, God speed them) like.  What I do have a 
problem with is the idea that anything written to, or in the presence 
of, or concerned with, children should be free of All Scary, Dark, 
and Tragic Things.  And sex.  I would also venture to argue that 
children know more about sex than adults do -- at least, they know 
what counts, whereas the adults often forget.  But that's by the by.  
Suffice it to say that the marketers are obviously thinking in manila 
folders, not people either young or old.  And they don't seem to know 
their history either.

Lisa I.