Spiderwick Chronicles, target age of?
William December Starr
"Spiderwick Chronicles" and "Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles"
series (5 and 3 books respectively, I believe) by Holly Black and
Tony DiTerlizzi?
(If anyone's wondering why I'm asking about this re various authors,
the reason is that I'm trying to figure out whether to recommend
that MITSFS buy certain books. Our policy, which is very vague and
unofficial and mostly just accreted over time, is to get "good"
young-adult books, but generally not smaller children's books.)
-- wds
Kurt Busiek
Publisher says 8-12, grades 3-7. Having read them, I'd say that's reasonable.
I'd call it middle-grade fiction, YR rather than YA.
kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!
icarp...@aol.com
You have to be careful with the younger ages, particularly the second
series where the language can be coarse and the behavior of the Grace
children is really unpleasant. For example, at one point Jared calls
one boy a lard ass. I had big problems with this with my 8 and 9 year
old (at the time) kids.
Matt
netcat
15g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>, icarp...@aol.com says...
If your kids haven't heard much worse from their peers at that age,
you're probably home-schooling them on an isolated island.
rgds,
netcat
Kurt Busiek
> On Mar 29, 9:44 pm, Kurt Busiek <k...@busiek.com> wrote:
>> On 2010-03-29 19:19:45 -0700, wdst...@panix.com (William December Starr)
> said:
>>
>>> What are people's feelings as to the target age group for the
>>> "Spiderwick Chronicles" and "Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles"
>>> series (5 and 3 books respectively, I believe) by Holly Black and
>>> Tony DiTerlizzi?
>>
>>> (If anyone's wondering why I'm asking about this re various authors,
>>> the reason is that I'm trying to figure out whether to recommend
>>> that MITSFS buy certain books. Our policy, which is very vague and
>>> unofficial and mostly just accreted over time, is to get "good"
>>> young-adult books, but generally not smaller children's books.)
>>
>>> -- wds
>>
>> Publisher says 8-12, grades 3-7. Having read them, I'd say that's
>> reasonable.
>>
>> I'd call it middle-grade fiction, YR rather than YA.
>
> You have to be careful with the younger ages, particularly the second
> series where the language can be coarse and the behavior of the Grace
> children is really unpleasant. For example, at one point Jared calls
> one boy a lard ass. I had big problems with this with my 8 and 9 year
> old (at the time) kids.
Wouldn't be an issue here. The term "lard ass" is not one I think I
need to protect my kids from, and I expect they've heard worse.
I assume it would be even less of an issue with the MITSFS, since
William was trying to gauge whether it was "too young" for them to buy,
not whether it would damage the young minds at MIT with very mildly
salty language.
kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!
Elaine Thompson
Starr) wrote:
>What are people's feelings as to the target age group for the
>"Spiderwick Chronicles" and "Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles"
>series (5 and 3 books respectively, I believe) by Holly Black and
>Tony DiTerlizzi?
>
We got them from the library and I couldn't help noticing the
illustrator's name was more prominent than the writer's. Lots of
pictures, relatively scant text. Decent story, AIR, though. Anyway...
age group... I'd say about the same as the Roddas you asked about the
other day, 8-10ish.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Kurt Busiek
> On 29 Mar 2010 22:19:45 -0400, wds...@panix.com (William December
> Starr) wrote:
>
>> What are people's feelings as to the target age group for the
>> "Spiderwick Chronicles" and "Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles"
>> series (5 and 3 books respectively, I believe) by Holly Black and
>> Tony DiTerlizzi?
>
> We got them from the library and I couldn't help noticing the
> illustrator's name was more prominent than the writer's.
For values of "prominent" that equate to "in the same font and at the
same size," and values of "illustrator" that equate to "illustrator and
co-writer."
Black and diTerlizzi have said that they co-plotted the story, that she
did most of the writing but he wrote some bits, too. She had final say
over the text, but it wasn't merely a "her writer, him illustrator"
deal, which is why they didn't break it down into specific credits.
Elaine Thompson
wrote:
I sit corrected. Whenever I was poking around wondering who'd done
what in the series, I didn't find anything that detailed, just that
diTerlizzi was an artist. So I jumped to conclusions.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Ryan McCoskrie
> You have to be careful with the younger ages, particularly the second
> series where the language can be coarse and the behavior of the Grace
> children is really unpleasant. For example, at one point Jared calls
> one boy a lard ass. I had big problems with this with my 8 and 9 year
> old (at the time) kids.
>
You object to the name calling little boy rather than his vaguely psychotic
older sister? Do you live in Sandford village and volunteer for the
Neighbourhood watch Alliance?