Hurin Marketed As Book For Kids

[Lalwendë]

I had an e-mail from Amazon a few minutes ago that pointed me to this page and what is on there but a trailer for Children of Hurin! Now the trailer was very nice indeed so I'm not gripin', but ought this to be marketed as a book for children?

Would children be disturbed by it? Would they understand it? Would they even enjoy it? I don't doubt bright teenagers would find it a fabulous read, but children?

Do you, as an adult, find it insulting or are you not bovvered?

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

Children are too soft these days. We need to feed them more violence, more adventure, and way, way more evil dragons. So I'm all for it.

Of course, this is just the old 'Fantasy/Tolkien for kids' line. I think suggesting this book for children is more likely to be due to ignorance rather than agreement with my above proposal.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Oh, today's kids are used to violence alright, so that aspect probably wouldn't even cause an eyelash to bat. But why would they market a book in which incest is a main theme for kids?!

Oh, I have it - the word "children" in the title does it! It just has to be a children's book!

[Hookbill the Goomba]

Perhaps Children need to learn that not all fantasy books are about 'chosen' kids with magic and hilarious side-kicks.

I don't know how you would try to make it appeal to children. Its such a tragic tale and very little good happens not to mention the writing style is very complicated for those not used to it. although it is also interesting that, according to the people who work at my bookshop, The Hobbit is now generally advised to be put in the older children's section, usually about 16 upwards. Are children getting less able or less willing to read?

Okay, enough of the social commentary.

[the guy who be short]

Well, the average IQ in Britain at least has fallen over the last 10 years, so pretty soon all books will be in the 16+ section.

I am not insulted as an adult because I'm not an adult. But then I'm not a 'child' in the sense of the age group children's books are aimed at either. I have no point here.

So... no, I don't think it's a good idea to let children read about incest and despair. But does it really matter? Children are growing up faster these days, maybe they can cope with the subject matter. However, I don't think they'll be able to cope with the language... after all, complete language acquisition is only at 10 years of age. An 11 year old isn't going to be able to deal with all the complex grammar and archaic vocabulary.

And even if they could, the book is too boring to interest them.

[Lalwendë]

There's certainly plenty of violence in fairy tales - even though so many have been Bowdlerised the gore still pops through, as do those underlying messages about sinister men and so on Yet we'd think nothing of giving a child a fairy tale to read. Religious texts can also be extremely violent and adult - I used to wonder what on earth the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah had done, as I just couldn't conceptualise it when a kid!

However the most throughly depressing thing I ever read in my life was one of the books in the spare bedroom at my Nan's house. She obviously thought it was OK for a child or she wouldn't have left it there - it was an autobiogrpahy by a ballerina who had survived Polio and lived in an iron lung - complete with gloomy pictures and gloomy cover art (I'll see if I can find it later as I still have it...). I'm a pretty gloomy old curmudgeon...did it damage my childish sunny outlook on life? Would Hurin do the same?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Would children be disturbed by it? Would they understand it? Would they even enjoy it?

Answers: Maybe; Probably not; They could as I have enjoyed some books that I wouldn't count among reading for children, though I was a child.

Originally Posted by Hookbill the Goomba

Perhaps Children need to learn that not all fantasy books are about 'chosen' kids with magic and hilarious side-kicks.

But actually, if with current possibilities of reading all the volumes of that, I think HP is as brutal as CoH, and considering the 7th, I think this is stepping largely into the world of adults. If nothing else, 7th is not a book for children - and not just because of the Multi Kills.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

There's certainly plenty of violence in fairy tales - even though so many have been Bowdlerised the gore still pops through, as do those underlying messages about sinister men and so on Yet we'd think nothing of giving a child a fairy tale to read.

Sure. Tolkien speaks on this matter in the essay "On Fairy-Stories":

The beauty and horror of The Juniper Tree (Von dem Machandelboom), with its exquisite and tragic beginning, the abominable cannibal stew, the gruesome bones, the gay and vengeful bird-spirit coming out of a mist that rose from the tree, has remained with me since childhood; and yet always the chief flavour of that tale lingering in the memory was not beauty or horror, but distance and a great abyss of time, not measurable even by twe tusend Johr. Without the stew and the bones—which children are now too often spared in mollified versions of Grimm —that vision would largely have been lost. I do not think I was harmed by the horror in the fairytale setting, out of whatever dark beliefs and practices of the past it may have come. Such stories have now a mythical or total (unanalysable) effect, an effect quite independent of the findings of Comparative Folklore, and one which it cannot spoil or explain; they open a door on Other Time, and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, maybe.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Religious texts can also be extremely violent and adult - I used to wonder what on earth the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah had done, as I just couldn't conceptualise it when a kid!

No doubt they are. In ancient Jewish tradition it was forbidden to read Genesis & some of the Prophets for those who were under 30. Of course probably also for other reasons, like that they won't be even able to understand it (prophets), but still... For example, I surely won't let my children read Hosea (the first of the 12 smaller prophets), even if they were interested.

[Durelin]

Originally Posted by TGWBS

Children are growing up faster these days, maybe they can cope with the subject matter.

That's an interesting statement. I think you're right in a way -- children are being introduced to many things at an earlier age than they would have a few decades ago maybe, but at the same time, regardless of how much they may already know or how intelligent they may be, most do not have the maturity to 'cope' with the things they see...because they are kids...and I feel in many cases because maturity hasn't been encouraged in them enough...

They seem to grow up faster, that's for sure, with the things they know, the way they dress, the things that come out of their mouths...but this 'growing up' doesn't seem to have much real *maturity* behind it. I mean, if the basic principles of responsibility and decency toward other human beings haven't at least really taken root yet, there's not much I think a kid is going to handle well.

Sorry, I've been working with small children for three weeks now. I think it's getting to me, this 'where have their parents been?' thing. Not that any of them are really bad kids...er...most of them...

So, I say -- no, Children of Hurin shouldn't be marketed for kids. Really it's just dumb to do so. On the other hand, there are a lot worse things being marketed for kids in my opinion. So actually a book and one that doesn't reinforce every stereotype known to high school is really pretty relieving in a way.

[davem]

http://www.harpercollinschildrensboo....aspx?id=38103

And that's the publisher's site....

[Hammerhand]

I think it is quite integral to define roughly what age a "child" or "kid" is. Also, it is important to note that children mature, or take an interest in certain things at different ages. I was 10 when i first read the Hobbit, at the time it was pure escapism, i loved it. Lord of the Rings i read at 11-12, and it was difficult to consume it all due to the vastness of the plot and the lexis, i still understood it.

Though i'm only 17 now i feel my interpretations of the book havn't changed dramatically - I am fully aware this may not always be the case! Obviously you think on certain scenarios or metaphors differently, maybe even challenge certain ethics, but that is something both children and adults do, i believe.

The mind alters perspective and the depth of the story, i think this is something every person with a love of literature does - and this is where "child" and "adult" divert in Tolkien's work - i think that a competant child will read the book, absorb and draw little sense of overview, the inability to compare or relate to much of the character's actions and i think children simply do not always fully understand what they read, maybe portions, but in a complicated book some things may be lacking. Basically, i think children can handle reading a book and absorbing the text, drawing a limited but valid conclusion of their own.

I'm all for Tolkien's literature being introduced to children from a relatively young age, it will only attract those children that want to read it don't forget, and though not everything my be understood; it will in time - that is what i have experienced personally. Contemplation , for adults and children alike, (on different levels obviously) often sends home a pang of understanding. Why would we allow Tolkien's work to subject only to the elder? it would die with that generation if that was the case.

[the guy who be short]

From On Fairy-Stories:

The beauty and horror of The Juniper Tree (Von dem Machandelbloom), with its exquisite and tragic beginning, the abominable cannibal stew, the gruesome bones, the gay and vengeful bird-spirit coming out of a mist that rose from the tree, has remained with me since childhood; and yet always the chief flavour of that tale lingering in the memory was not beauty or horror, but distance and a great abyss of time, not measurable even by twe tusend Johr. Without the stew and the bones--which children are now too often spared in mollified versions of Grimm*--that vision would largely have been lost.

*They should not be spared it - unless they are spared the whole story until their digestions are stronger.

On callow, lumpish, and selfish youth peril, sorrow, and the shadow of death can bestow dignity and even sometimes wisdom.

Presumably the kind of wisdom that says, "Oi, you! Don't fancy your sister."

So children should be introduced to "adult" subject matter - if they're old enough to handle it.

[Lalwendë]

I've been trying to think of somewhere to bung this article by AN Wilson about why kids need to read proper, old fashioned fairy stories - which is a rather good article as always - so this seems as good a thread as any!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...dren-want.html

Basically a survey had been done in the UK and it seems growing numbers of parents don't want to disturb their kiddies with scary fairy stories so they instead read them nice stuff at bedtime. To be honest - if I had to choose between having to get up every five minutes because the nipper had seen wolves behind the curtains and reading him Winnie the Pooh at bedtime, I'd go for Winnie. But to eradicate fairy stories altogether is just wrong!

Fairy stories are superb!

I did have to laugh at this quote though:

Some 3,000 British parents have been surveyed, revealing that more than a quarter of mothers now reject fairy stories in favour of books such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

I have nothing against that tale, which is a good preparation for life in the food-obsessed Britain of Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver.

It is a charming book, in which readers are invited to open flaps and see that the caterpillar has consumed a list of sensible fruit and vegetables.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is very good, but it does seem that we have endless things now which are all pious and instructional about star jumps and eating broccoli and learning about world festivals (in the UK you can now be condemned as a racist if your toddler is found not to like curry!). If I had to choose between watching some Disney nonsense about fairy princesses and the worst children's programme ever, namely Lazy Town which makes me feel like sending that fella in blue some Beta Blockers, give me the fairies anyday