Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Half the problem, though, is that we put children off great literature for life by forcing them to read what are very definitely NOT children's books before they're able to appreciate them.
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A thousand times, this.
Shakespeare's humor and drama isn't opaque to kids because the language is different (although that's part of it) but because Shakespeare dealt with adult themes--which is not a euphemism for "sex." The sex part, the kids tend to understand; it's why Midsummer Night's Dream is popular for high school productions. But family politics, royal negotiations, arranged marriages, banking contracts... most modern kids have no context for these, even if they could understand the flowery language and the bits of archaic vocabulary.
A number of the classics that *were* suitable for kids eighty years ago, no longer are; today's kids are working across a cultural barrier to understand them. American kids have no concept of the class issues in
Great Expectations, and the poor-orphan protagonist is so different from the way poverty shows up in the US today that they generally can't understand anything beyond the basic plot points.