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

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

Well, Harry is going to have the secret hq party pad.

Maybe he will just loan it out to Fred and George? They could use a pimpin place..

You know, I think I could write an essay on the subject of children's books, adults, and age apropriateness. But I won't.

I just think that what is apparopriate at say 11, isn't at 8.

And this book was in many ways, a lot more adult, and future.

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]

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.

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.

[villeinage.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to imply that parents should be unaware of the content of children's reading material.

In all honestly, I think I was responding to a theme that I found running through more than a few on-line discussions of OotP yesterday: not suitable for children/much too dark, etc.

That point of view irks me, for the reasons I gave above, and also because as a society, America has this sugary vision of childhood existing right alongside a popular culture that preaches cynicism and violence,and markets a kind of hypersexualized materialism directly to its children.

Just walk into any shopping mall in America, and try to find clothing for a girl over the age of 7 that isn't blatantly provocative, and/or a billboard for a product.

And witness the excitement about a recent study of videogames that showed they improved children's peripheral vision. Because, you know, the ability to scan one's environment for predators is such a valuable skill in comparison to the ability to, say, socialize, converse, use one's imagination.(sarcasm fully intended.)

But yes, there are many dark themes in GoF and OotP. They provide great opportunities for discussions with children about all sorts of important issues.

I'm preaching to the choir, of course.

More specifically, about Cedric in GoF: I found that I was relatively unaffected by his death on my first reading of the book. The second time through, though, when I knew it was coming, I was really anguished at his fate. I would have expected it to be the other way around.

Do you think your nephew will feel comfortable talking with you about his reactions to the book?

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.

[spiderine.livejournal.com]

With Sirius' death, Harry now probably owns that house. (And the shrewish portait and possibly the Elf)

hmmm.... possibly it could go to the Malfoys, since Narcissa is Black's closest living blood relative, and I don't use the term "blood" lightly!

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

My nephew hasn't seen me or spoken to me in two years. He lives in New Mexico and I do not have a relationship with his parents.

He knows me as Aunt Debbie who sends him books. In fact, he's due for some now.

Although we are talking about taking a trip there - renting an efficiency and taking meat packed in dry ice and a large part of my kitchen.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to be that Sirius has drawn up a will just to prevent that from happening - and that Dumbledore will enforce it.

[thsfuhqinsux.livejournal.com]

I have just now started wondering about Taylor being able to handle it after reading Jacquez's journal, but not too overly worried. Taylor knows what happened at the end of GoF, and she knows this book will be darker. As long as she is aware of that and that it may be getting scarier, then I don't feel comfortable telling her she can't read it. I am not quite comfortable with her reading a book that is this dark, but I am even less comfortable with trying to censor what she does read. The philosophy here is that when the child is old enough to ask, they are old enough for the answer, which extends to what they read or watch on tv. I leave it to her to decide what she can and cannot handle and she has so far handled it very well. When things get too much, she bails. And I am always nearby in the event she has questions or she does get scared. And I am reading this book too, I understand your worry is with his parents not reading it before or with him. Letting the child decide does not conflict with knowing what the child is reading or watching before the child does. And Taylor will ask me before watching or reading something what my opinion is, and when she has doubts she won't read or watch it without me being there. She watches CSI, which even I find a bit too gruesome at times, but she doesn't want to watch it without me being there. And she has a surprisingly good grasp of the more adult situations. But that's Taylor, eleven and maybe a bit advanced and mature for that age.
JP being seven, though, I have so far been resistant to him playing games that are rated T for teens with lots of bloodshed and gore. I don't like the fact that you can pretend to kill someone or something. But then again, he hasn't asked or wanted to play games like that. Especially considering he recently let a spider bite him on purpose because he thought it would make him Spiderman. Taylor has a very good idea of real/not real, JP doesn't yet.

Re:

[spiderine.livejournal.com]

hmmm.... do you think Sirius takes things that "seriously" (sorry for the pun!!!)? I think of him as a case of arrested development - being in Azkaban for so long didn't let him mature beyond the age of an 18 year old or so... he cares more about not being bored than his own safety - do you think he'd really go so far as to draw up a will? I think he felt he was pretty much immortal until the moment he was proven otherwise.

Too young, too old...

[(Anonymous)]

I ran hard and fast through the kids' books way too young and was learning interesting and gory ways to kill people via Agatha Christie books when I was your nephew's age. My mom and dad tried to keep up for me as long as they could but they just couldn't-- I'm a much faster reader and as a kid I had unlimited time a lot of times to read. So I read a lot of things long, long before I was supposed to. The only thing I can remember really 'getting' to me was an adult horror book I got hold of in kindergarten. But of course, it depends on the kid's emotional maturity, etc., etc. too.

Having said that, I think Rowling has really screwed the youth of America (I mean England, no, the world!) with these books-- they're supposed to get darker and more mature as they progress, and that's fine for kids growing up with the books now, but... like your nephew they're just going to want to plow through them, and once they're all published a kid could conceivably read 'em all in a year or less, and I don't know if they're really 'meant' that way.
--Phishtar (who wandered over here when you were giving those text tips)