Hey all,
I found this article a while ago but forgot to post it here. It is an account from a modern day mom trying to expose her child to the same books that the mom read when she was young, but finding that they almost all contain questionable content. It’s an interesting read! We so often focus on censorship from the ideological “right,” but sometimes it goes in reverse.
http://www.vox.com/2015/7/10/8901109/childrens-books-racist-sexist
Enjoy!
-Chris Kimsey
I chose Andrew Clements’ response to the NY Times question about what was causing the rise of darker themes in young adult works in recent years. Basically, his opinion is that in our current rapid information age, where all the terrible things that happen are disseminated to us in full color, rapid fire news segments, something must be dark indeed to put the darkness of our real lives in perspective. As he says, he “enjoyed the sharp contrast between [his] safe and normal… life, and the horrors… of [his] reading life.”
I definitely agree with him. I feel like the children of today are exposed to way more horror than children of the past were, at least in a visceral way. World War II may have been the most horrendous war in history, but kids didn’t have access to all the news about it so suddenly and vividly.
Clements’ point can be related to The Giver in a couple of ways. Obviously at the time Lowry wrote the book this kind of ultra-saturated media content was beginning to take its toll. Another more thematic way that it ties in, though, is in that the characters in The Giver are purposefully protected from the kind of truth that the children of today are receiving. It is interesting to consider what the characters in the book would think of a dystopian novel… I imagine they would have no context to weigh it against (all of them apart from, of course, the Giver himself). It is helpful in perceiving why young adult books from earlier times were not so arresting as they are now.
– Chris Kimsey
“A Seed”
My first experience with literature was around the age of five. Give or take a few years — my memories from that age are hazy at best. I do, however, remember my father reading the book out loud to myself and my sister with great clarity. That book was The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. I can see, vividly, the layout of the furniture. My sister and I shared a room, our twin beds lined up along one wall. My father would pull up a chair (beside my bed, I would have you note — clearly I was his favorite) and crack open the tome, dispensing only one chapter each night. No matter how much I protested, bribed, or reasoned, I would have to wait until the next evening to hear any more.
This was almost certainly the seed from which grew my love of all things fantasy, not to mention my becoming a hopeless nerd. I would tell my fellow kindergarteners how AMAZING the story of Bilbo was, what with its hobbits, and wizards, and dwarves, and elves, and, oh my gosh, the WORLD itself! As I recall they could not have cared less, but that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm.
To this day my favorite stories are big and fantastical, be they the works of George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan or one of almost countless others (thankfully I never had a shortage of reading material). Of course I read more standard children’s works as well — Where the Wild Things Are comes to mind as a favorite — but it will always be The Hobbit that has hold of a special, very consequential portion of my heart. I couldn’t be more thankful to my father for the role he played in instilling in me a love of reading, or more grateful that he chose such a wonderful book.
– Chris Kimsey
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Hopefully this one isn’t too conventional… I chose Where the Wild Things Are because it has always been one of my favorite books… I must have gone through it at least ten thousand times as a child, memorizing every nuance. Still a lovely book :).
– Chris Kimsey
Well, unlike Cinderella, I actually preferred the Perrault version on this one. It seemed a little more clear in what it was trying to accomplish. Spelling out the moral at the end was a little much, though! I found the addition of the story about the second wolf in the Grimm version very bizarre…
I don’t know if anyone watched the movie Into the Woods last year, but I had no idea that it stayed so true to the Grimm fairy tales. Now at least I have some idea of just why that movie was so bonkers…