Quote:
Originally Posted by meeera
My experience - yes, as a real parent, and an aunt, and so forth - has been that children are simply uninterested in books with themes that are truly unsuitable for them. Once those children start to transition into being teenagers (as mine is right now), they can obtain whatever books they like independently from the library, and IMO at that age it's pointless and potentially counterproductive to try to stop them, even if their parents are so motivated.
As a parent of a literate young adult, my role in his reading is to give him plenty of books for Christmas and birthdays, to model reading for pleasure and information, and to make sure he has a library card.
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There are kids like that. There are also kids who read indiscriminately and pick up wildly inappropriate material. Or who view reading as a challenge to be conquered and deliberately aim for adult books. It really depends on the kid.
I've known kids who picked up Dan Simmons, Marion Zimmer Bradley, the Pern books, etc, in elementary school, and to this day refuse to consider reading anything else by those authors because the experience was so bad. They simply weren't ready for it.
It's the same as video games and other art - different people are simply different, and need to manage their art experiences appropriately.
Parents should be the ones guiding kids down appropriate avenues of exploration until the kids are old enough to make their own decisions,
which varies by content type and by the kid involved.
No one in this thread is trying to stop kids from reading. I'm really not sure where you got that. Different people are expressing varying levels of comfort with certain content, and one group is being insulted because of their preferences.
On a side note, it's interesting that the art form dictates how people react to age guidelines. Everyone's OK with R / 16+ ratings, people have tried to ban violent video games for ages, but as soon as people suggest that swearing in books isn't universally approved cries of censorship ring from every corner.
P.S. Anne MacCaffrey is the worst at misleading marketing. She's got books that look so much like they're aimed at the YA market - dragons/unicorn girl/plucky female half-elf on bright covers - but they're really not and it can be confusing and upsetting. David Drake's covers can also be misleading - his War God's series look like straightforward action adventures, but end up having graphic torture/rape scenes. I really wish there was a screening app that could look for content, that would have saved some people a few nasty surprises.