More HP spoilers

[mamadeb]

With Sirius' death, Harry now probably owns that house. (And the shrewish portait and possibly the Elf) and whatever money Sirius had in his Gringott's vault.

Okay, sure, from some povs, it should be for Remus, but that's not how things work.

A house. More money. This is major in a world where seventeen is adulthood.



In other news, I just got a phone call from my mother, who is visiting my brother and his family. My nephew is eight. He's a bright kid and a good reader.

He's reading GoF. His parents haven't read it first. And I suspect they'll ignore my advice and let him read OotP without reading it first, either. Since, you know.

They're kid's books. Which means that A. adults shouldn't read them and B. they're safe.

Then again, I'm not sure about Debby's reading level.

Comments

Weighing In

[villeinage.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm fairly protective (some would say overzealous) about shielding my children from mass media and much of what passes for popular culture.
But I'm perfectly fine about reading OotP out loud to my now-almost-7-year-old.

Some of it has to do with the fact that we're reading it together. I might be less comfortable if she were encountering Voldemort's torture of Harry in GoF all by her lonesome.

But I also wonder if we don't underestimate children's capacity for coping with darkness. Certainly Western "children's stories" have long concerned themselves with tragedy and violence, as Bettleheim and others have noted. IIRC,in the older version of "Snow White" the evil Stepmother is punished by being made to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance until she drops dead.

And any religious child develops familiarity with stories at least as difficult and intense as anything Rowling pens. The Akeidah (Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac at G-d's command)the Ten Plagues, culminating in the death of the first-born Egyptians, the rape of Dinah, the deaths of Nadav and Avihu are some that spring immediately to mind.

And I won't easily forget observing a Christian preschool class during which the teacher passed around a nail about as long as the children's forearms, explaining that nails just like this one pierced Jesus' hands and feet as he lay dying on the cross. (I winced, but the kids seemed to take it in stride.)

My point (and I did have one)is that as long as stories are presented in context, as part of a larger moral framework, kids seem to cope just fine with all sorts of potentially upsetting themes/episodes. Rowling is writing within a moral universe, albeit a complex one, in which one of the most important lessons is that good and evil are not always what they seem.

To my mind that's an invaluable lesson for kids to at least begin to wrestle with. Because the evils my kids are most likely to encounter are the casual, popular and easily available ones. And frankly, a snakelike Evil Overlord with glowing red eyes seems rather tame in comparison.

Re: Weighing In

[ratcreature]

IIRC,in the older version of "Snow White" the evil Stepmother is punished by being made to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance until she drops dead.

What do you mean with "older version"? AFAIK that's the end in every version unless it's by Disney (and I don't remember that movie all that well because I've only seen it once as a kid). Even the "fairy tales on tape" version (what my mom usually got me because my parents had no interest in reading fairy tales or other stories to me when I was little) ended with the evil stepmother dancing in hot iron shoes till she drops dead.

Re: Weighing In

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Franziska, allow me to introduce you to American fairy tales.

I've read a number of versions of Snow White. I've never seen that ending. I've seen the Evil Queen killed, or kill herself (or move in with them, but that was a sitcom)but not with those shoes.

Re: Weighing In

[ratcreature]

Huh. You people are weird. ;)

Seriously, I never found that ending particularly gruesome or anything, it's not like it's described in horrifying detail. There's stuff like that in nearly every fairy tale, like Rumpelstilzchen tearing himself into two parts in his rage (and that was even depicted in my favorite fairy tale book), or the witch being burned to death in the oven in Hänsel und Gretel, or the evil sisters hacking off part of their feet in Cinderella, not to mention that one with the serial killer husband who hid the bodies in a chamber (Bluebeard? or something like that) etc.

Fairy tales

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Now, *those* endings we see - the witch in Hansel and Gretel and the ending of Rumpelstiltsken. And, usually, Red Riding Hood and her grandmother survive the wolf, who does not survive himself. However, I've seen many versions of the Cinderella story, and while some *do* have the hacking of the feet, others just have it so the feet don't fit. And some have the birds pecking out the stepsisters' eyes.

Um. When I told it, and I didn't often spare details, I had them moving into the palace with Cinderella and the prince and waiting, *waiting*, WAITING for her to get back at them... :)

In commonly told US versions of Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty, they do not have children, which I'm told is normal in the European versions.

Re: Fairy tales

[ratcreature]

For Rapunzel the older version really makes sense, because in it the Rapunzel is thrown out because the old woman discovers she's pregnant, when the (obviously clueless) Rapunzel asks her why her clothes won't fit anymore *snort*, and Rapunzel is banished into the wilderness where she has her twins, and the blinded prince finds them there later. However the newer version sort of glosses over the pregnancy out of wedlock part, and the old woman just discovers that Rapunzel has been seeing the prince because Rapunzel blabs. She still has the twins though (I've actually never seen a version where she doesn't), so they had sex as well, it just makes less sense that the woman is so angry with the prince.

Though in the versions of Sleeping Beauty I know she doesn't have children, at least I don't remember any.

Re: Fairy tales

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm confusing the two stories, but I think there is one version of Sleeping Beauty where the prince does more than kiss her - and she *doesn't* wake up.

In fact, I think this was exploited in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series.

Re: Fairy tales

[ratcreature]

I did a quick online search and there are really variants that go as you say. There's an Italian one written down by Giambattista Basile, where a king who's passing through decides to have sex with her because she's so beautiful but she doesn't wake up, has twins, and finally awakes because one day her twins suckle on her finger instead of on her breasts and remove the hemp thread whose sting had put her to sleep.

Re: Weighing In

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

It's not that Joshua is reading the book. It's that his parents didn't read it first so that they either know he can deal with it (being his parents, I'd assume they'd have a reasonable idea) or be on the alert in case he didn't.

Also, Joshua's mother isn't Jewish, and his father isn't religious. In fact, he might well be sent to a local Catholic school because the public schools are pretty bad where they are.

I'm not really afraid of Voldemort. I'm afraid of Cedric Diggory. The only death Joshua's been aware of is my father's, and he barely knew his grandfather - I think he'd seen Daddy twice consciously, and that before the age of five.

Of course, it's up to his parents. I just want them to act from knowledge, not from false ideas.