The 9-year-old wants to read Lovecraft.
Elf M. Sternberg
This was the nine-year-old's first strange question of the
evening. Apparently her big sister gave her the first Xanth book, A
Spell For Chameleon, when she was visiting her mother this weekend and
I have to wonder if it's really the right book for her. There's a
scene in there where some demoness is offering herself to the hero,
and that's one of the offers she makes. I read her the dictionary
description, "A woman who cohabits with an important man."
A little later, she was playing with her stuffed plushes: Silver-- a
ragged kitty, Crystal-- a cute toy dragon, and Cthulhu. Yes, that
Cthulhu. And she asked me, "Dad, what does Cthulhu really look like?"
So I pulled my copy of H.P. Lovecraft's Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror
and the Macabre off the bookshelf and read to her the scene where
Cthulhu emerges from his pit, judiciously edited. "Everyone was
listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly
squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into
the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. The Thing
cannot be described - there is no language for such abysms of
shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all
matter, force, and cosmic order. Three men were swept up by the flabby
claws before anybody turned."
She said, "That's so cool! I'm gonna read that whole book!"
I wonder if I should let her. Her mother exposed her to a ton of Buffy
the Vampire Slayer and other violent fare when she was much younger
and Omaha and I have worked hard to recover the kid that was inside
her since we won custody, but there comes a time when one has to
accept that kids will read what they want, and literary violence is
very different from television violence. And if she learns something--
Goddess knows Lovecraft had a very respectable vocabulary-- maybe that
won't such a bad thing.
I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
Lovecraft?
Elf
Jaimie Vandenbergh
wrote:
>I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
>through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
>series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
>Lovecraft?
Honestly, I'd be more concerned about the Anthony. The Xanth series
starts off fine, but by Ogre, Ogre it's slipping into "demon rape is
just something you have to put up with when you're a nymph" territory.
Lovecraft might give her nightmares, but Anthony is bad life training.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
"Dawn is a beautiful way to end an evening. It's a lousy way
to start a day." - Dominic Flandry
Unknown
Lovecraft, so she can see his style is just one of many contradictory ones. Then she won't get nightmares if she realises
Lovecraft is only a small part of what real life is.
--
--------------------------------- --- -- -
Posted with NewsLeecher v3.8 Final
Web @ http://www.newsleecher.com/?usenet
------------------- ----- ---- -- -
Peter Bruells
> There's nohing bad about learning. Its all about balance. Make sure
> she gets a good range of books, yes including Lovecraft, so she can
> see his style is just one of many contradictory ones. Then she won't
> get nightmares if she realises Lovecraft is only a small part of
> what real life is.
Lovecraft is real life? Man, am I glad that I live in an universe
where it's fiction.
SCNR :-)
Elf M. Sternberg
> On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:23:47 -0700, Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com>
> wrote:
>
>>I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
>>through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
>>series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
>>Lovecraft?
> Honestly, I'd be more concerned about the Anthony. The Xanth series
> starts off fine, but by Ogre, Ogre it's slipping into "demon rape is
> just something you have to put up with when you're a nymph" territory.
My experience with Anthony started in my teens with Ox, then
Omnivore, then Orn, which I understand is backwards. I read them
because I thought the math presented in Ox was kinda cool and
Anthony's skill at titillation was pretty good then (appropriate to my
teenage brain) although reading them backwards I started to realize
just how absurdly contrived the conflicts between the three main
characters were. I'd heard good things about Macroscope, read it, and
all of my interest in Anthony died right there.
It wasn't until I'd read Eric Nylund's _Signal To Noise_ that
I appreciated how much better Macroscope could have been.
So it's good to know that I should be discouraging her
interest in Xanth.
> Lovecraft might give her nightmares, but Anthony is bad life training.
Aye, that's my thought.
Elf
Richard R. Hershberger
> There's nohing bad about learning. Its all about balance. Make sure she gets a good range of books, yes including
> Lovecraft, so she can see his style is just one of many contradictory ones. Then she won't get nightmares if she realises
> Lovecraft is only a small part of what real life is.
I'm trying to wrap my brain around the idea of forbidding a child from
reading something. By the time I was nine I was routinely choosing my
own reading material. By the time I was eleven I was routinely
checking books out from the adult section of the library. I don't
recall ever being stopped from reading anything. Maybe it is
different because I was a boy, or perhaps because I was the youngest
of four boys. But looking back, it seems to me that I naturally chose
material appropriate for my level of development. (Of course when you
have older brothers, you learn about the birds and the bees the old-
fashioned way: rumor and innuendo.)
None of this isn't to say that the child ought not be encouraged to
read better books. But encourage books the kid doesn't want to read,
and forbid books the kid does want to read, and you have successfully
turned reading into a chore.
Then there is my niece, who taught herself to read because Dad was
reading The Lord of the Rings to her at bedtime, but he was going too
slow.
Richard R. Hershberger
Shane Paul
advanced level than her peers? I started reading books like Lord of the
Rings when I was younger than your daughter, and I can't for the life of me
see what harm it might have done. Granted, I may have been a little older
when I got started on Lovecraft, Poe, Bradbury, etc., but your kid sounds
like she can handle it.
One question: wher'd she get the Cthulhu plushie? I want one!
******************************************
Jesus saves.
Allah forgives.
Cthulhu thinks you'd make a nice sandwich.
******************************************
On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:23:47 -0700, Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com>
wrote:
>"Dad, what's a concubine?"
Christopher J. Henrich
<e...@drizzle.com> wrote:
> I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
> through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
> series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
> Lovecraft?
I think it's OK. If anything in his work scares her too much, she can
talk about it with you. If it /really/ grosses her out, she will drop
it of her own accord.
--
Chris Henrich
http://www.mathinteract.com
God just doesn't fit inside a single religion.
Peter Bruells
> One question: wher'd she get the Cthulhu plushie? I want one!
http://www.toyvault.com/cthulhu/plush_cthulhu.html has some.
Jaimie Vandenbergh
wrote:
>Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> writes:
>> On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:23:47 -0700, Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
>>>through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
>>>series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
>>>Lovecraft?
>
>> Honestly, I'd be more concerned about the Anthony. The Xanth series
>> starts off fine, but by Ogre, Ogre it's slipping into "demon rape is
>> just something you have to put up with when you're a nymph" territory.
>
> My experience with Anthony started in my teens with Ox, then
>Omnivore, then Orn, which I understand is backwards. I read them
>because I thought the math presented in Ox was kinda cool and
>Anthony's skill at titillation was pretty good then (appropriate to my
>teenage brain)
I enjoyed Anthony as a geeky male early-teenager with hormones. I went
back and did a flick-through a couple of years back and even the ones
I remembered fondly (including the Manta books) turned out to be
middling to poor.
>although reading them backwards I started to realize
>just how absurdly contrived the conflicts between the three main
>characters were. I'd heard good things about Macroscope, read it, and
>all of my interest in Anthony died right there.
>
> It wasn't until I'd read Eric Nylund's _Signal To Noise_ that
>I appreciated how much better Macroscope could have been.
Oh? I must find myself a copy - half of Macroscope was full of good
ideas.
> So it's good to know that I should be discouraging her
>interest in Xanth.
>
>> Lovecraft might give her nightmares, but Anthony is bad life training.
>
> Aye, that's my thought.
On top of which, Lovecraft has a wierd and often hard to work with way
of forming prose, which might disinterest her fairly rapidly anyway.
Can't think of much that'll scratch that itch for her without going
too far towards schlock horror or adult sexuality. Maybe the Call of
Cthulhu rulebook? I enjoyed that a lot more than HPL's actual stories!
Maybe Alan Garner. Most of his books have otherworldly oddness to them
that might fit, The Owl Service and Wierdstone of Brisingamen are
favourites. A Castle of Bone by Penelope Farmer is a good grim kids
book.
Elf M. Sternberg
> Maybe Alan Garner. Most of his books have otherworldly oddness to them
> that might fit, The Owl Service and Wierdstone of Brisingamen are
> favourites. A Castle of Bone by Penelope Farmer is a good grim kids
> book.
Thanks for the recommendations. Oddly enough, The Owl Service
has sat on my bookshelf for several years now unread. I bought it
because I thought the language was so beautifully different than
anything I'd read at the time that I wanted to absorb it, capture it,
and characterize with it, but as I got deeper into the book I sorta
bounced off it. I'll give it a second chance.
Elf
Paul Clarke
[snip - Alan Garner's _The Owl Service_ and _The Weirdstone of
Brisingamen_]
>
> Thanks for the recommendations. Oddly enough, The Owl Service
> has sat on my bookshelf for several years now unread. I bought it
> because I thought the language was so beautifully different than
> anything I'd read at the time that I wanted to absorb it, capture it,
> and characterize with it, but as I got deeper into the book I sorta
> bounced off it. I'll give it a second chance.
_Weirdstone_ will probably work better than _The Owl Service_ for a
nine-year-old, even one who wants to read Lovecraft (not that that
should stop you reading _The Owl Service_, of course). The plot in
_TOS_ is largely driven by a potentially romantic triangle, and it's
also rather elliptic (*), whereas _Weirdstone_ is a more
straightforward adventure. If she's claustrophobic, though, there's
one scene she might find a bit much - I'm neither claustrophobic nor
nine years old, and I still find it scary.
(*) Though not as elliptic as Garner's _Red Shift_ or _Strandloper_. I
think they're both marvellous, but simple and straightforward they're
not.
Elf M. Sternberg
> I'm trying to wrap my brain around the idea of forbidding a child from
> reading something.
I suppose it makes more sense if I explain that my ex lost
custody of the child for, among other things, having a complete lack
of any sense of boundaries or appropriate behavior for a small child.
My daughter was depressed and alienated from her peers precisely
because she couldn't relate to them: my ex had burdened her with too
much adult knowledge. I've worked hard to put the kid back together
again and now she has friends in her age group and is a happy and
cheerful kid.
The ex, however, has now made it her life's mission to try and
destroy my reputation and prove that she's not the bad mother the
court process determined her to be. The merest hint or illusion of
impropriety in my household gets blown up into a vicious whispering
campaign on her private blog. So I tend to be very careful when
considering what media I bring into the house and encourage her to
read, watch, or hear.
When I was her age my big reads were EE Smith, and Vic
Stapleton. I graduated to Heinlein somewhere around 13.
Elf
Jaimie Vandenbergh
wrote:
>Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> writes:
It's a little archaic and overly English, maybe (despite being set in
Wales). Very moving, if you let it carry you. Very short, too.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
"We all recall that the difference between a computer salesman and a car
salesman is that the car salesman *knows* he's lying to you"
"... and probably knows how to drive"
- F O'Donnell and M Smith, in afs
Ericth...@gmail.com
> "Dad, what's a concubine?"
> I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
> through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
> series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
> Lovecraft?
I think Lovecraft is much more wholesome than anything by Piers
"Aqualung" Anthony.
For what its worth, the fact that she showed an interest in reading is
good-
what other things has she shown an interest in? If she's old enough
to take on Anthony, she may be able to enjoy writers like Susan Cooper
(The "Dark is Rising" series), Diane Wynne Jones (the Chrestomanci
series might be good, as well as Dogsbody and the Power of Three),
Carol Kendall (the gammage Cup) and of course theNarnia series and the
Hobbit by umm, those English guys.
The important thing to do is expose her to a lot more fiction, so as
to swamp out the Anthony in her brain before it does damage.
Eric Tolle
Gerry Quinn
says...
> Shane Paul <sn...@fubar.com> writes:
>
>
> > One question: wher'd she get the Cthulhu plushie? I want one!
>
> http://www.toyvault.com/cthulhu/plush_cthulhu.html has some.
Awww... who would have thought Chthulhu could be so CUTE?
- Gerry Quinn
Jaimie Vandenbergh
http://www.hello-cthulhu.com/?date=2003-11-30
Cheers - Jaimie
--
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -
massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining,
and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you
least expect it." -- Gene Spafford
David Given
[...]
> Thanks for the recommendations. Oddly enough, The Owl Service
> has sat on my bookshelf for several years now unread. I bought it
> because I thought the language was so beautifully different than
> anything I'd read at the time that I wanted to absorb it, capture it,
> and characterize with it, but as I got deeper into the book I sorta
> bounced off it. I'll give it a second chance.
_TOS_ is *weird* (but in a good way). It's one of those books that gives you
just enough information to figure it out, but no more. If you know the
underlying myth a lot of things pop out at you, but you don't need to know it
to appreciate the book. I think it's his best work.
_Elidor_ really creeped me out when I was small. The business about shadows on
the wall capturing your gaze and becoming portals --- brr. Good, though.
_Weirdstone_ and _Gomrath_ are *okay*, but they are rather generic children's
fantasy novels. Good ones, but not up to the standard of _TOS_ and _Elidor_.
_Red Shift_ is bizarre and I probably wouldn't recommend it to children.
Diana Wynne Jones says that children are used to learning and thinking about
things, and as a result tend to think more about books than adults do. The
classic example of this is her _Hexwood_, which is built like a logic puzzle
--- the scenes are arranged more or less in order of theme rather than
chronologically! She's described having child and parent show up for a
signing, child clutching a copy of _Hexwood_, and the parent saying that they
didn't understand a word and the child saying that it made perfect sense.
(Highly recommended, BTW, as is nearly all of her stuff. Except for _Fire and
Hemlock_.)
--
┌── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─── http://www.cowlark.com ───────────────────
│ "Thou who might be our Father, who perhaps may be in Heaven, hallowed be
│ Thy Name, if Name Thou hast and any desire to see it hallowed..." ---
│ _Creatures of Light and Darkness_
Richard R. Hershberger
Fair enough. I just think it is important to let the kid explore. A
couple of years ago I culled my bookshelves, which is every bit as
painful as it sounds. I ended up with about three boxes of old SF
paperbacks, and took them to a party with a bunch of science fiction
readers. I announced that they were free for the taking. The
reactions were interesting. Everyone was appreciative, and approved
of this method of book disposal. The adults picked through the boxes
and took a volume here or there, while expressing regret that they
didn't have the time to give to reading more. The teenagers were
enthused, eagerly grabbing volumes. My heart cockles (whatever they
are) were quite warmed by the experience. So long as there are
teenagers enthusiastic about the opportunity to read old science
fiction paperbacks, there is hope.
Richard R. Hershberger
David Formosa (aka ? the Platypus)
<rrh...@acme.com> wrote:
[...]
> My heart cockles (whatever they
> are)
There the valves of your heart.
Peter Trei
> On 11 Apr, 17:10, Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com> wrote:
> [snip - Alan Garner's _The Owl Service_ and _The Weirdstone of
> Brisingamen_]
>> Thanks for the recommendations. Oddly enough, The Owl Service
>> has sat on my bookshelf for several years now unread. I bought it
>> because I thought the language was so beautifully different than
>> anything I'd read at the time that I wanted to absorb it, capture it,
>> and characterize with it, but as I got deeper into the book I sorta
>> bounced off it. I'll give it a second chance.
BBC radio recently did an excellent 90 minute dramatization of TOS.
> _Weirdstone_ will probably work better than _The Owl Service_ for a
> nine-year-old, even one who wants to read Lovecraft (not that that
> should stop you reading _The Owl Service_, of course). The plot in
> _TOS_ is largely driven by a potentially romantic triangle, and it's
> also rather elliptic (*), whereas _Weirdstone_ is a more
> straightforward adventure. If she's claustrophobic, though, there's
> one scene she might find a bit much - I'm neither claustrophobic nor
> nine years old, and I still find it scary.
> (*) Though not as elliptic as Garner's _Red Shift_ or _Strandloper_. I
> think they're both marvellous, but simple and straightforward they're
> not.
Weirdstone's sequel "The Moon of Gomroth" has the best evocation of
The Wild Hunt I've ever read.
Brisingamen and Gomroth are both aimed at a younger readership than
TOS, RS, or Strandloper. I can't remember the stated ages, the
protagonists in one set are around 11-12, the other around 16.
Peter Trei
T Guy
> "Dad, what's a concubine?"
>
> This was the nine-year-old's first strange question of the
> evening. Apparently her big sister gave her the first Xanth book, A
> Spell For Chameleon, when she was visiting her mother this weekend and
> I have to wonder if it's really the right book for her.
(T Guy):
You've probably figured this out of your own accord, but rememberthe
provenance of this question in case f a possible legal hearing.
(Elf):
>There's a
> scene in there where some demoness is offering herself to the hero,
> and that's one of the offers she makes. I read her the dictionary
> description, "A woman who cohabits with an important man."
(T Guy):
Okay. Confession time. I thought that the punchline was that she was
going to call your partner a concubine. For preference, in front of a
teacher and thirty classmates.
(Elf):
> A little later... she asked me, "Dad, what does Cthulhu really look like?"
>
> So I pulled my copy of H.P. Lovecraft's Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror
> and the Macabre off the bookshelf and read to her the scene where
> Cthulhu emerges from his pit, judiciously edited. "Everyone was
> listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly
> squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into
> the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. The Thing
> cannot be described
(T Guy):
Yeah, there it is <Scores one Lovecraft adjective point>.
I'ld've just said to her 'indescribable - confident that that is the
term Lovecraft would have used.
(Elf):
> ...She said, "That's so cool! I'm gonna read that whole book!"
>
> I wonder if I should let her... But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
> Lovecraft?
(T Guy):
I think that I was transferring from W. E. Johns to Agatha Christie
and Doyle at 9. So, firstly, I'm impressed by your daughter. Secondly,
if you want a serious reaction rather than some inane gags, I may not
be the man, not actually having any children, but I'd be grateful
she's not going to be overwhelmed when teachers start distributing
Jane Austen, the Brontes or Dickens to her class in a few years' time.
Plus: I'd talk about the stories with her after she's read them (my
mother read everything I, my brother and sister read until I was 11
and started getting into Those Odd American Comics, thence SF,
Dashiell Hammett, etc.), as you mention downthread.
Elf M. Sternberg
>>""Everyone was
>> listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly
>> squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into
>> the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. The Thing
>> cannot be described
>
> Yeah, there it is <Scores one Lovecraft adjective point>.
> I'ld've just said to her 'indescribable - confident that that is the
> term Lovecraft would have used.
Yeah, but it sounds good when you read it aloud. Slobbering,
squeezing, gelatinous, immense, tainted, swiping with flabby claws.
Maybe you can't describe it, but you can sure imagine it!
Wait, didn't they see something like that in an episode of
Barney?
Elf
Jerry Brown
<paul....@eu.citrix.com> wrote:
<snip>
>_Weirdstone_ will probably work better than _The Owl Service_ for a
>nine-year-old, even one who wants to read Lovecraft (not that that
>should stop you reading _The Owl Service_, of course). The plot in
>_TOS_ is largely driven by a potentially romantic triangle, and it's
>also rather elliptic (*), whereas _Weirdstone_ is a more
>straightforward adventure. If she's claustrophobic, though, there's
>one scene she might find a bit much - I'm neither claustrophobic nor
>nine years old, and I still find it scary.
Seconded; I read it 30 years ago, and just thinking of it still makes
me shudder.
Jerry Brown
--
A cat may look at a king
(but probably won't bother)
Alie...@gmail.com
> On Apr 11, 10:47 am, Niz (nos...@nospam.com) wrote:
>
> > There's nohing bad about learning. Its all about balance. Make sure she gets a good range of books, yes including
> > Lovecraft, so she can see his style is just one of many contradictory ones. Then she won't get nightmares if she realises
> > Lovecraft is only a small part of what real life is.
>
> I'm trying to wrap my brain around the idea of forbidding a child from
> reading something. By the time I was nine I was routinely choosing my
> own reading material. By the time I was eleven I was routinely
> checking books out from the adult section of the library. I don't
> recall ever being stopped from reading anything. Maybe it is
> different because I was a boy, or perhaps because I was the youngest
> of four boys. But looking back, it seems to me that I naturally chose
> material appropriate for my level of development. (Of course when you
> have older brothers, you learn about the birds and the bees the old-
> fashioned way: rumor and innuendo.)
I'm right there with you. The first non-"Dick&Jane" book I read was
Heinlein's Red Planet at age four-and-a-half (1957). My mother warned
me it would "ruin my mind"; I had no idea what that meant. I now know
that she was of course completely right. ;>)
I had similar experience with the local school and public libraries;
the Abnormal Psychology section and "The Art Of War" stick out
particularly in my memories.
I am however constantly reminded of the abysmal ignorance on the
part of the general public whenever something explored nearly to
exhaustion in SF decades ago becomes Prime Time newsworthy and public
figures expound about how it needs some thinking about.
> None of this isn't to say that the child ought not be encouraged to
> read better books. But encourage books the kid doesn't want to read,
> and forbid books the kid does want to read, and you have successfully
> turned reading into a chore.
Strongly concur.
> Then there is my niece, who taught herself to read because Dad was
> reading The Lord of the Rings to her at bedtime, but he was going too
> slow.
My "dyslexic" ADD_HD nephew took up reading when I showed him how
many things he wanted to know are in books. ;>)
Mark L. Fergerson
Dave Empey
news:m11q1317ro8l3s5li...@newsposting.sessile.org:
> Can't think of much that'll scratch that itch for her without going
> too far towards schlock horror or adult sexuality. Maybe the Call of
> Cthulhu rulebook? I enjoyed that a lot more than HPL's actual stories!
>
And the great CoC campaigns published in the 80s:
_Shadows of Yog-Sothoth_
_Fungi from Yuggoth_
_Spawn of Azathoth_
_Masks of Nyarlathotep_
and the more recent _Beyond the Mountains of Madness_ is good too.
--
Dave Empey
Remember, if you're doing any major experiments in stellar
dynamics, always mount a scratch star first! --Richard Todd
Dave Empey
news:87veg2n...@drizzle.com:
> When I was her age my big reads were EE Smith, and Vic
> Stapleton. I graduated to Heinlein somewhere around 13.
>
>
Who's Vic Stapleton? Do you mean "Victor Appleton"?
Christopher J. Henrich
Platypus <dfor...@usyd.edu.au> wrote:
According to my online dictionary, they would have to be the bivalves
of my heart.
Christopher J. Henrich
<Ericth...@gmail.com> wrote:
to these add Diane Duane, especially the "Young wizards" series.
--
Chris Henrich
http://www.mathinteract.com
The total lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is working.
Wayne Throop
:: There the valves of your heart.
: According to my online dictionary,
: they would have to be the bivalves of my heart.
But are the valves and the myocardium alive, alive-o?
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
David Johnston
<chen...@monmouth.com> wrote:
>In article <slrnf1qgko....@localhost.localdomain>, aka ? the
>Platypus <dfor...@usyd.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> On 11 Apr 2007 11:34:35 -0700, Richard R. Hershberger
>> <rrh...@acme.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>> > My heart cockles (whatever they
>> > are)
>>
>> There the valves of your heart.
>>
>According to my online dictionary, they would have to be the bivalves
>of my heart.
Life is just one clam thing after another.
David DeLaney
CLAMS GOT HEART!
Dave "cardio-carrying member" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
philos...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> writes:
>
>> On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:23:47 -0700, Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
>>>through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
>>>series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
>>>Lovecraft?
>
>> Honestly, I'd be more concerned about the Anthony. The Xanth series
>> starts off fine, but by Ogre, Ogre it's slipping into "demon rape is
>> just something you have to put up with when you're a nymph" territory.
>
> My experience with Anthony started in my teens with Ox, then
>Omnivore, then Orn, which I understand is backwards. I read them
>because I thought the math presented in Ox was kinda cool and
>Anthony's skill at titillation was pretty good then (appropriate to my
>teenage brain) although reading them backwards I started to realize
>just how absurdly contrived the conflicts between the three main
>characters were. I'd heard good things about Macroscope, read it, and
>all of my interest in Anthony died right there.
>
> It wasn't until I'd read Eric Nylund's _Signal To Noise_ that
>I appreciated how much better Macroscope could have been.
>
> So it's good to know that I should be discouraging her
>interest in Xanth.
>
>> Lovecraft might give her nightmares, but Anthony is bad life training.
>
> Aye, that's my thought.
>
If you think Lovecraft is going to be too intense for her, you might
try her on that other founder of the horror story, Poe. His stuff is
more psychological and less supernatural, which might not be better,
now that I think of it. It may be easier to convince her that there
isn't really a lost race of Old Ones living in Antarctica than it may
be to convince her that someone wouldn't kill someone else because he
thought the guy had the Evil Eye.
Rebecca
Peter Meilinger
> Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> wrote innews:m11q1317ro8l3s5li...@newsposting.sessile.org:
>
> > Can't think of much that'll scratch that itch for her without going
> > too far towards schlock horror or adult sexuality. Maybe the Call of
> > Cthulhu rulebook? I enjoyed that a lot more than HPL's actual stories!
>
> And the great CoC campaigns published in the 80s:
> _Shadows of Yog-Sothoth_
> _Fungi from Yuggoth_
> _Spawn of Azathoth_
> _Masks of Nyarlathotep_
>
> and the more recent _Beyond the Mountains of Madness_ is good too.
As are both Delta Green sourcebooks. The DG fiction books are okay,
but I preferred the rulebooks.
Pete
Elf M. Sternberg
> Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in
> news:87veg2n...@drizzle.com:
>
>> When I was her age my big reads were EE Smith, and Vic
>> Stapleton. I graduated to Heinlein somewhere around 13.
> Who's Vic Stapleton? Do you mean "Victor Appleton"?
Yeah, I do. Sorry. Haven't been sleeping well recently.
Elf
Elaine Thompson
<chen...@monmouth.com> wrote:
>In article <1176312017.2...@q75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
><Ericth...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 11, 7:23 am, Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com> wrote:
>> > "Dad, what's a concubine?"
>>
>> > I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
>> > through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
>> > series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
>> > Lovecraft?
>>
>> I think Lovecraft is much more wholesome than anything by Piers
>> "Aqualung" Anthony.
>>
>> For what its worth, the fact that she showed an interest in reading is
>> good-
>> what other things has she shown an interest in? If she's old enough
>> to take on Anthony, she may be able to enjoy writers like
snipped list, here's more:
If she goes for Lovecraft and can handle the old fashioned style, try
some Nesbit, like _The Five children and It_, which is the first of
the Psammead trilogy. And George MacDonald's _PRincess duology.
The nice thing about those older works is there's nothing in them a
kid can't handle partly because of the way it's handled in the
writing. We've learned the hard way that not all really current
juvenile or YA writing is like that.
Moving to modern writers who haven't been mentioned yet: Patricia
Wrede's Enchanted Forest chronicles; Pratchett's _Wee Free Men_
featuring a nine-year old girl, and accessible to all the nine-year
olds we've given it to.
Rebecca Rupp is another our daughter enjoys. And Suzy McKee Charna's
NY trilogy starting with _The Bronze King_.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Elf M. Sternberg
> In article <slrnf1qgko....@localhost.localdomain>, aka ? the
> Platypus <dfor...@usyd.edu.au> wrote:
>> On 11 Apr 2007 11:34:35 -0700, Richard R. Hershberger
>> <rrh...@acme.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>> > My heart cockles (whatever they
>> > are)
>> There the valves of your heart.
> According to my online dictionary, they would have to be the bivalves
> of my heart.
"Those values we carry deep in the cockles of our hearts--
maybe in the sub-cockle region. Maybe in the liver. Maybe in the
colon. We just don't know." -- Dennis Leary.
Elf
Dave Empey
No need to apologize. I was just hoping there was another author
I could check out. Hope I didn't sound snarky.
philos...@yahoo.com
I have no kids, so I'll just rattle off some of the authors I remember
the most from trips to the library back when: Susan Cooper, Lloyd
Alexander, Zilpha Keatly Snyder, Shirley Rousseau Murphy, Scott
O'Dell, H.M. Hoover, and Madeleine Polland. Not all of them are
genre, but I tend to find that the line is very blurry between genre
and YA books. The Murphy books may be a little bit on the adult side,
iirc from some of what I read.
HTH!
Rebecca
htn963
> "Richard R. Hershberger" <rrhe...@acme.com> writes:
>
> > reading something.
>
> custody of the child for, among other things, having a complete lack
> of any sense of boundaries or appropriate behavior for a small child.
> My daughter was depressed and alienated from her peers precisely
> because she couldn't relate to them: my ex had burdened her with too
> much adult knowledge. I've worked hard to put the kid back together
> again and now she has friends in her age group and is a happy and
> cheerful kid.
>
> The ex, however, has now made it her life's mission to try and
> destroy my reputation and prove that she's not the bad mother the
> court process determined her to be. The merest hint or illusion of
> impropriety in my household gets blown up into a vicious whispering
> campaign on her private blog. So I tend to be very careful when
> considering what media I bring into the house and encourage her to
> read, watch, or hear.
I don't care to pry into other poster's private lives, but since
you chose to brought all this up here: is this more about your 9-year-
old or about your ex?
Ask yourself whether you're really doing something for your
child's best interest or just to score points. Even smart people can
behave irrationally during and after custody disputes. And, of
course, we're only hearing your side of the story.
Personally, if I had a kid who has already been exposed to
"mature" stuff and likes to read, I'd give her wide latitudes to read
what she wants. The "social adjustment" will made outside of reading,
not within it, through tlc and counseling if need be. If you think
books will make or break the mental stability of a kid, then you've
just bought into the mentality of those who ban and censor books.
If your ex has lost legal custody, then she has a very steep
burden of proof before she can convince the court she's actually a
better guardian afterall, unless you happen to live in a very abnormal
jurisdiction.
--
Ht
Jaimie Vandenbergh
>Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> wrote in
>news:m11q1317ro8l3s5li...@newsposting.sessile.org:
>
>> Can't think of much that'll scratch that itch for her without going
>> too far towards schlock horror or adult sexuality. Maybe the Call of
>> Cthulhu rulebook? I enjoyed that a lot more than HPL's actual stories!
>>
>
>And the great CoC campaigns published in the 80s:
>_Shadows of Yog-Sothoth_
>_Fungi from Yuggoth_
>_Spawn of Azathoth_
>_Masks of Nyarlathotep_
Ah, memories of happy weekends reducing SAN by the D6! Back when I had
weekends free to do that sort of thing.
>and the more recent _Beyond the Mountains of Madness_ is good too.
Oh? I must go hunting.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, even if you are soggy
and hard to light.
Dave Empey
> On 12 Apr 2007 00:13:09 GMT, Dave Empey <dem...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>>Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> wrote in
>>news:m11q1317ro8l3s5li...@newsposting.sessile.org:
>>
>>> Can't think of much that'll scratch that itch for her without going
>>> too far towards schlock horror or adult sexuality. Maybe the Call of
>>> Cthulhu rulebook? I enjoyed that a lot more than HPL's actual
stories!
>>>
>>
>>And the great CoC campaigns published in the 80s:
>>_Shadows of Yog-Sothoth_
>>_Fungi from Yuggoth_
>>_Spawn of Azathoth_
>>_Masks of Nyarlathotep_
>
> Ah, memories of happy weekends reducing SAN by the D6! Back when I had
> weekends free to do that sort of thing.
>
>>and the more recent _Beyond the Mountains of Madness_ is good too.
>
> Oh? I must go hunting.
Oh, and I forgot _Horror on the Orient Express_. Almost worth it just
for the "cathedral car".
Richard R. Hershberger
> On Apr 11, 8:16 am, "Richard R. Hershberger" <rrhe...@acme.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Apr 11, 10:47 am, Niz (nos...@nospam.com) wrote:
>
> > > There's nohing bad about learning. Its all about balance. Make sure she gets a good range of books, yes including
> > > Lovecraft, so she can see his style is just one of many contradictory ones. Then she won't get nightmares if she realises
> > > Lovecraft is only a small part of what real life is.
>
> > I'm trying to wrap my brain around the idea of forbidding a child from
> > reading something. By the time I was nine I was routinely choosing my
> > own reading material. By the time I was eleven I was routinely
> > checking books out from the adult section of the library. I don't
> > recall ever being stopped from reading anything. Maybe it is
> > different because I was a boy, or perhaps because I was the youngest
> > of four boys. But looking back, it seems to me that I naturally chose
> > material appropriate for my level of development. (Of course when you
> > have older brothers, you learn about the birds and the bees the old-
> > fashioned way: rumor and innuendo.)
>
> I'm right there with you. The first non-"Dick&Jane" book I read was
> Heinlein's Red Planet at age four-and-a-half (1957). My mother warned
> me it would "ruin my mind"; I had no idea what that meant. I now know
> that she was of course completely right. ;>)
Oddly enough, Red Planet was the first science fiction novel I read,
but I was in sixth grade: I came to science fiction later in life
than did you.
Richard R. Hershberger
T Guy
> A little later, she was playing with her stuffed plushes: Silver-- a
> ragged kitty, Crystal-- a cute toy dragon, and Cthulhu. Yes, that
> Cthulhu. And she asked me, "Dad, what does Cthulhu really look like?"
(T Guy):
I see your Cthulhu plushie and raise you a lemon.
T Guy
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>So I pulled my copy of H.P. Lovecraft's Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror
>and the Macabre off the bookshelf and read to her the scene where
>Cthulhu emerges from his pit, judiciously edited. "Everyone was
>listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly
>squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into
>the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. The Thing
>cannot be described - there is no language for such abysms of
>shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all
>matter, force, and cosmic order. Three men were swept up by the flabby
>claws before anybody turned."
>
>She said, "That's so cool! I'm gonna read that whole book!"
Much better than looking at pictures of Cthulhu, which make him look
silly instead of scarey.
Christopher J. Henrich
<how...@brazee.net> wrote:
Flabby claws, indeed. Does Cthulhu have a lithe, opaque proboscis?
--
Chris Henrich
http://www.mathinteract.com
David McMillan
>> that might fit, The Owl Service and Wierdstone of Brisingamen are
>> favourites. A Castle of Bone by Penelope Farmer is a good grim kids
>> book.
>
> Thanks for the recommendations. Oddly enough, The Owl Service
> has sat on my bookshelf for several years now unread. I bought it
> because I thought the language was so beautifully different than
> anything I'd read at the time that I wanted to absorb it, capture it,
> and characterize with it, but as I got deeper into the book I sorta
> bounced off it. I'll give it a second chance.
>
> Elf
I have an old favorite from that age bracket which I remembered so
fondly that in my late 20s I actually tracked down and bought a copy...
and it *lived up to my memories.* It's nothing linguistically
brilliant, like Lovecraft, being a rather ordinary fantasy plot, albeit
with an unusual slant. But the *way* it's written worked for me equally
well at 10 and at ~27. The language is accessible to non-biblioholic
10-year-olds, but the storytelling is strong enough to work across
generations (IMO, at least).
The book in question is "Grimbold's Other World," by Nicholas Stuart
Gray.
David McMillan
> In article <m2ejmqn...@rogue.ecce-terram.de>, p...@ecce-terram.de
> says...
>> Shane Paul <sn...@fubar.com> writes:
>>
>>
>>> One question: wher'd she get the Cthulhu plushie? I want one!
>> http://www.toyvault.com/cthulhu/plush_cthulhu.html has some.
>
> Awww... who would have thought Chthulhu could be so CUTE?
That's CthUTE, thank you. And CthUDDLY. :D
David DeLaney
> I have an old favorite from that age bracket which I remembered so
>fondly that in my late 20s I actually tracked down and bought a copy...
>and it *lived up to my memories.* It's nothing linguistically
>brilliant, like Lovecraft, being a rather ordinary fantasy plot, albeit
>with an unusual slant. But the *way* it's written worked for me equally
>well at 10 and at ~27. The language is accessible to non-biblioholic
>10-year-olds, but the storytelling is strong enough to work across
>generations (IMO, at least).
> The book in question is "Grimbold's Other World," by Nicholas Stuart
>Gray.
Ah yes, "Apples, by your names so old / Apples green and red and gold"... One
of my old favorites too, and I have a hardback copy. (_Someone_ should, at
some point, start _reprinting_ some of the older childrens' books that were
Very Good at their time; I want to have a chance to actually buy some of the
ones I remember, without having to trawl through other states' used bookstores
or online messed-up webpages...)
Dave
David Given
[...]
> Ah yes, "Apples, by your names so old / Apples green and red and gold"... One
> of my old favorites too, and I have a hardback copy. (_Someone_ should, at
> some point, start _reprinting_ some of the older childrens' books that were
> Very Good at their time; I want to have a chance to actually buy some of the
> ones I remember, without having to trawl through other states' used bookstores
> or online messed-up webpages...)
A little while ago I managed to track down Keith Claire's _The Tree Wakers_
(with some help from this newsgroup). I'd previously read it at 10, and I
reread it at about 29.
It was just as weird as I recalled: the central plot hinges on a group of
visitors from a world where time is circular visiting our world, where time is
linear. They crossed over when the timelines intersected, and got stranded.
Now they're trying to make sure they get back at the other intersection. They
know they *did*, because after all they remember it happening before, but they
can't quite remember all the details. That all worked rather nicely.
The language, however, turned out to be crude and a bit unwieldy and fairly
unimpressive. It also ended up being disappointingly short.
So, I read it and was disappointed, but then read it again about six months
later and found it had improved considerably. *shrug*
...
Oh, yes, also as an adult I found myself noticing some rather... dubious
scenes. Such as when the queen of the visitors is trying to entice a rather
shy plant that's growing in a pond (in Kew Gardens) to produce a parachute
seed, which they need to follow. There's this loving description of her,
dripping wet, dancing furiously around the plant while it slowly extends a
proboscis up towards the sky and eventually fires the seed out of its tip...
--
┌── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─── http://www.cowlark.com ───────────────────
│ "Thou who might be our Father, who perhaps may be in Heaven, hallowed be
│ Thy Name, if Name Thou hast and any desire to see it hallowed..." ---
│ _Creatures of Light and Darkness_
Paul Clarke
> David McMillan <spamt...@skyefire.org> wrote:
> > The book in question is "Grimbold's Other World," by Nicholas Stuart
> >Gray.
>
> Ah yes, "Apples, by your names so old / Apples green and red and gold"... One
> of my old favorites too, and I have a hardback copy.
And educational too - had I not read it I'd never have known that
"gyve" was a word for shackles ("Moonshine strive / Shatter gyve"). I
found a second-hand paperback copy a couple of years ago and was
pleased to find the story-telling held up well.
While we're nominating childhood favourites, does anyone else remember
_The Tree Wakers_ by Keith Claire? An elfin, alien race inhabiting Kew
Gardens, cyclical time, musical feasts, and domesticated big cats; I
don't remember much of the plot or the quality of the prose, but the
setting was wonderful.
Elaine Thompson
DeLaney) wrote:
>David McMillan <spam...@skyefire.org> wrote:
>> I have an old favorite from that age bracket which I remembered so
>>fondly that in my late 20s I actually tracked down and bought a copy...
>>and it *lived up to my memories.* It's nothing linguistically
>>brilliant, like Lovecraft, being a rather ordinary fantasy plot, albeit
>>with an unusual slant. But the *way* it's written worked for me equally
>>well at 10 and at ~27. The language is accessible to non-biblioholic
>>10-year-olds, but the storytelling is strong enough to work across
>>generations (IMO, at least).
>>The book in question is "Grimbold's Other World," by Nicholas Stuart
>>Gray.
Waves hand. I loved it, bought a copy with babysitting money, kept it
around, eventually acquired a hardcover, and gave the paperback to our
daughter when she was seven, I think. She loves it still, several
years later. (And other N.S. Gray, as well, like Fabylon, Mainly
inthe Moonlight, Applestone....)
And the two copies provided a slight educational tweak in that the
paperback was British, the hardcover wasn't and she noticed minor
differences in the language.
>
>Ah yes, "Apples, by your names so old / Apples green and red and gold"... One
>of my old favorites too, and I have a hardback copy.
My favorite poem was the one sending the dragons back. And the worst
poem the door from the door after "hullaballo, I say to you/open wide
and let me through!" had ever heard. "never through my life and
time/have I heard a worser rhyme" or something like that.
But what lingers long, is the house they see while on flying horse to
the capital to rescue Gareth (again).
And I do wonder how young Jeffrey turned out, after the end.
(_Someone_ should, at
>some point, start _reprinting_ some of the older childrens' books that were
>Very Good at their time; I want to have a chance to actually buy some of the
>ones I remember, without having to trawl through other states' used bookstores
>or online messed-up webpages...)
or pay a fortune for. I'd like a copy of the 13th is Magic, but not
enough to spend over $100 on it. My daughter occasionally asks about
it, too, but when I pull up the list of what's available on the net
and show her the prices, that's the end of it.
Amazon & ABEbooks both show affordable copies of _Grimbold_, BTW.
Affordable= <$20.00, some even less than $10.
Purple House Press was reprinting some old favorites. That's how I
got a _Space Child's Mother Goose_. Are they still around?
<google> Yes. But they haven't done Gray. Or Joan Howard's _Magic_.
I'd also like the *whole* Mushroom Planet series reprinted, not just
the first two. My favorites were the 4th and 5th. I've got them, but
it's hard to give them to kids when they're so hard to find.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
David DeLaney
>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>(_Someone_ should, at
>>some point, start _reprinting_ some of the older childrens' books that were
>>Very Good at their time; I want to have a chance to actually buy some of the
>>ones I remember, without having to trawl through other states' used bookstores
>>or online messed-up webpages...)
>
>or pay a fortune for. I'd like a copy of the 13th is Magic, but not
>enough to spend over $100 on it. My daughter occasionally asks about
>it, too, but when I pull up the list of what's available on the net
>and show her the prices, that's the end of it.
>
>Amazon & ABEbooks both show affordable copies of _Grimbold_, BTW.
>Affordable= <$20.00, some even less than $10.
>
>Purple House Press was reprinting some old favorites. That's how I
>got a _Space Child's Mother Goose_. Are they still around?
>
><google> Yes. But they haven't done Gray. Or Joan Howard's _Magic_.
>
>I'd also like the *whole* Mushroom Planet series reprinted, not just
>the first two. My favorites were the 4th and 5th. I've got them, but
>it's hard to give them to kids when they're so hard to find.
Add in the _Spaceship Under The Apple Tree_ series and however many of Joan
Aiken's _earlier_ works it takes to get the whole Arabel's Raven series _and_
the whole collection of stories about that one rather odd family (whose surname
I can't remember now) whose children had more than their share of classic
Magical Adventures... There's others but I'm not mentally pulling them up
right now.
Elaine Thompson
Were the kids Mark and Harriet? The surname was Armitage. Most of
them were collected in _Armitage, Armitage Fly Away Home_ but there's
at least one that wasn't. That one was a sequel to the Serial Garden
episode, when Mark builds a garden out of pictures on cereal boxes,
and whistles a tune his music teacher taught him it becomes real and
there's a noble lady trapped inside waiting for her beloved. Who, of
course, turns out the be the music teacher. But he can't get in once
Mark gets him to come, because Mark's mother has done her quarterly
cleaning. In the sequel we're left with hope that he will someday
find his way. I believe it's in the _Faithless Lollybird_ collection.
If not that, it's _Harp of Fishbones_.
I'd like to know if Aiken wrote any more about it. And I'd like
someone to do a complete listing of all her short stories, any series
among them, and what collections they appear in. Some are in more
than one anthology.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
Derek Lyons
Oh? Try this: http://www.hello-cthulhu.com/?date=2003-11-30
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
David DeLaney
>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>>Add in the _Spaceship Under The Apple Tree_ series and however many of Joan
>>Aiken's _earlier_ works it takes to get the whole Arabel's Raven series _and_
>>the whole collection of stories about that one rather odd family (whose
surname
>>I can't remember now) whose children had more than their share of classic
>>Magical Adventures...
>
>Were the kids Mark and Harriet? The surname was Armitage.
Bingo!
>Most of
>them were collected in _Armitage, Armitage Fly Away Home_ but there's
>at least one that wasn't. That one was a sequel to the Serial Garden
>episode, when Mark builds a garden out of pictures on cereal boxes,
>and whistles a tune his music teacher taught him it becomes real and
>there's a noble lady trapped inside waiting for her beloved. Who, of
>course, turns out the be the music teacher. But he can't get in once
>Mark gets him to come, because Mark's mother has done her quarterly
>cleaning. In the sequel we're left with hope that he will someday
>find his way. I believe it's in the _Faithless Lollybird_ collection.
>If not that, it's _Harp of Fishbones_.
>I'd like to know if Aiken wrote any more about it. And I'd like
>someone to do a complete listing of all her short stories, any series
>among them, and what collections they appear in. Some are in more
>than one anthology.
Those are not among the ten Aiken I have, but I now clearly remember reading
A,AFAH from the Cleveland Public Library, way back when. Googling shows a
story named "Hope" in aHoF, and one named "Memory" in FL; can't say which
of those it would be. But I see I also want to get Smoke from Cromwell's
Time, Arabel and Mortimer, Mortimer Says Nothing, Mortimer's Cross, and Tales
of Arabel's Raven, to complete the ones I've already read long ago and the
Arabel series. And Not What You Expected also sounds familiar... and another
site says it has two Armitage stories that weren't in A,AFAH, and another
appears in A Small Pinch of Weather.
So yes, a by-series ology of Aiken would be useful to put where Google could
find it...
Cheerful Iconoclast
wrote:
>I wonder if I should let her. Her mother exposed her to a ton of Buffy
>the Vampire Slayer and other violent fare when she was much younger
>and Omaha and I have worked hard to recover the kid that was inside
>her since we won custody, but there comes a time when one has to
>accept that kids will read what they want, and literary violence is
>very different from television violence. And if she learns something--
>Goddess knows Lovecraft had a very respectable vocabulary-- maybe that
>won't such a bad thing.
>
>I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
>through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
>series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
>Lovecraft?
I find this odd. When I was ten, if I wanted to read a book, I picked
it up and read it. I didn't ask permission.
My parents never told me I couldn't read something, but if they had, I
would have ignored them.
Blue Tyson
wrote:
Yeah, will you ban her going to the library? Or the internet? You
can get all of Lovecraft there.
The only book I ever remember my mother being dubious about was when I
found Interview with the Vampire in the Woolworths 50c bin when I was
8, but by the time she noticed, I had read it twice. :)
Any kid approaching or in double figures needs a good horror
education, I reckon! :)
philos...@yahoo.com
wrote:
>On May 5, 4:36 am, Cheerful Iconoclast <cheerfuliconocl...@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>> On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:23:47 -0700, Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >I wonder if I should let her. Her mother exposed her to a ton of Buffy
>> >the Vampire Slayer and other violent fare when she was much younger
>> >and Omaha and I have worked hard to recover the kid that was inside
>> >her since we won custody, but there comes a time when one has to
>> >accept that kids will read what they want, and literary violence is
>> >very different from television violence. And if she learns something--
>> >Goddess knows Lovecraft had a very respectable vocabulary-- maybe that
>> >won't such a bad thing.
>>
>> >I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
>> >through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
>> >series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
>> >Lovecraft?
>>
>> I find this odd. When I was ten, if I wanted to read a book, I picked
>> it up and read it. I didn't ask permission.
>>
>> My parents never told me I couldn't read something, but if they had, I
>> would have ignored them.
>
>
>Yeah, will you ban her going to the library? Or the internet? You
>can get all of Lovecraft there.
>
Why is it so unreasonable for parents to keep an eye on what books
their kids are reading? They know what their kids are like, and what
they are capable of handling. It's no different than monitoring what
they watch on TV or at the movies.
And, when I went to the library, they wouldn't loan out certain books
to kids under certain ages. My parents had to tell them it was ok for
me to read Dracula.
And there is only one movie I recall my parents strictly forbidding me
to see, and in that case, my mom sat me down and said: "I know that
you want to see it, but I think that the rape scene in it is too
graphic." And my response was "Ok". It was only one of the many
things I could do for entertainment, and I was willing to trust my
parent's judgment in that. It's not like they were capricious in
their decisions.
Rebecca
Carl Dershem
news:1178352870.9...@u30g2000hsc.googlegroups.com:
My folks tried to keep an eye on my reading when I was a kid, but even
the stuff the theought they knew about tripped them up sometimes. They
knew about the Heinlein Juveniles, but thought his style was set, and
didn't say anything when "Stranger in a strange land" and "Glory road"
came out.
Likewise, they just thought it was "clever" that an 8-year-old was
reading James Joyce and Mark Twain, but never having read them much
themselves (beyond "Tom Sawyer"), they didn't realize what was *in*
those books.
Keep an eye on what the kid reads, and be totally honest with her when
she asks questions, and she should end up OK. And if her reading causes
her to go out and get her own dictionary, that's all for the good.
cd
--
The difference between immorality and immortality is "T". I like Earl
Grey.
Alie...@gmail.com
> On 5 May 2007 01:14:30 -0700, Blue Tyson <aussieva...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> >On May 5, 4:36 am, Cheerful Iconoclast <cheerfuliconocl...@gmail.com>
> >wrote:
> >> On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:23:47 -0700, Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com>
> >> wrote:
>
> >> >I wonder if I should let her. Her mother exposed her to a ton of Buffy
> >> >the Vampire Slayer and other violent fare when she was much younger
> >> >and Omaha and I have worked hard to recover the kid that was inside
> >> >her since we won custody, but there comes a time when one has to
> >> >accept that kids will read what they want, and literary violence is
> >> >very different from television violence. And if she learns something--
> >> >Goddess knows Lovecraft had a very respectable vocabulary-- maybe that
> >> >won't such a bad thing.
>
> >> >I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
> >> >through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
> >> >series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
> >> >Lovecraft?
>
> >> I find this odd. When I was ten, if I wanted to read a book, I picked
> >> it up and read it. I didn't ask permission.
>
> >> My parents never told me I couldn't read something, but if they had, I
> >> would have ignored them.
Same here, wife agrees.
> >Yeah, will you ban her going to the library? Or the internet? You
> >can get all of Lovecraft there.
>
> Why is it so unreasonable for parents to keep an eye on what books
> their kids are reading? They know what their kids are like, and what
> they are capable of handling. It's no different than monitoring what
> they watch on TV or at the movies.
It is unreasonable, and it isn't. Yes, that's a paradox, and too
bad, it's also true.
Thing is parents know what their kid is like and what they can
handle right now (actually, what they've handled in the past) but what
they can handle right now might surprise the parents. At some point
the kid must either integrate "harsh reality" into their ever-
complexifying worldview or forever be "fluffy bunny" unrealistic. And
regardless of what parents do, kids _will_ explore outside the box.
> And, when I went to the library, they wouldn't loan out certain books
> to kids under certain ages. My parents had to tell them it was ok for
> me to read Dracula.
Well, I grew up in a somewhat different era, and my parents figured
if I wanted to read that thick a book it was my problem; I was given
free run of the public library at age ten or so, but they already knew
I didn't take "horror" movies seriously.
> And there is only one movie I recall my parents strictly forbidding me
> to see, and in that case, my mom sat me down and said: "I know that
> you want to see it, but I think that the rape scene in it is too
> graphic." And my response was "Ok". It was only one of the many
> things I could do for entertainment, and I was willing to trust my
> parent's judgment in that. It's not like they were capricious in
> their decisions.
That's the sort of judgement call parents, by definition, are
charged with making for their kids. Sometimes it's "protecting",
sometimes it's "overprotecting".
What is giggle-making for one kid can be pants-wetting shock 'n' awe
for another, similarly what's morality-inducing in one may be monster-
creating in another.
Movie ratings and such are useless; IMO your parents made a good
call based on what they knew directly of the film and you, not what
some reviewer or ratings-board-sitter thought was good for a kid
they'd never met.
Mark L. Fergerson
Elaine Thompson
>On 5 May 2007 01:14:30 -0700, Blue Tyson <aussi...@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On May 5, 4:36 am, Cheerful Iconoclast <cheerfuliconocl...@gmail.com>
>>wrote:
>>> On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:23:47 -0700, Elf M. Sternberg <e...@drizzle.com>
>>> wrote:
...
>>>
>>> >I can't stop her from reading Spell for Chameleon, she's halfway
>>> >through it. It's a heck of a step up from the Magic Treehouse or Droon
>>> >series. But... should I let the almost-ten-year-old start reading, uh,
>>> >Lovecraft?
>>>
>>> I find this odd. When I was ten, if I wanted to read a book, I picked
>>> it up and read it. I didn't ask permission.
>>>
>>> My parents never told me I couldn't read something, but if they had, I
>>> would have ignored them.
>>
>>
>>Yeah, will you ban her going to the library? Or the internet? You
>>can get all of Lovecraft there.
>>
>Why is it so unreasonable for parents to keep an eye on what books
>their kids are reading? They know what their kids are like, and what
>they are capable of handling. It's no different than monitoring what
>they watch on TV or at the movies.
Exactly. (parent of one, who has proven highly sensitive to some
books.) We'd originally had a hands-off sort of policy figuring if
something was too old for her or otherwise unsuitable she wouldn't be
interested. Then the nightmares or crying fits started, even over
apparently innocuous books like ... oh, one was Ibbotson's _Aunts_
book. So we started paying more attention, pre-reading, and opining
on whether we thought her reading it right now was a good idea and
telling her what was in it that might cause trouble. ("Aslan's
death being ok was one pre-warning item for TLTW&TW.)
It very much depends on the child.
>
>And, when I went to the library, they wouldn't loan out certain books
>to kids under certain ages. My parents had to tell them it was ok for
>me to read Dracula.
Now *that* OTOH, I've never personally run into. When I was
approximately age ten I started browsing and checking out books from
the adult section and no one blinked or tried to tell me I couldn't.
The librarians certainly didn't.
--
Elaine Thompson <Ela...@KEThompson.org>
philos...@yahoo.com
Well, the rule in my library was that under-16s couldn't check out
"adult" books. It does make a certain amount of sense. After all, a
parent might want to know before their 10-year-old checks out Candide
and other such books, after all.
But my family was in the library a lot, and the librarians knew us
pretty well. To the point where I would be told to remind my brother
that his book was overdue when I got home. And they generally didn't
give me any problems, except about Dracula. That one they made me get
my dad and have him say it was ok. But when one librarian tried to
stop me from checking out _The White Dragon_ (and yes, that is the
third book in the trilogy!), another of the librarians said it was ok
and they let me have it. So it was a pretty flexible policy.
Rebecca
Cheerful Iconoclast
<Ela...@KEThompson.org> wrote:
>>>> My parents never told me I couldn't read something, but if they had, I
>>>> would have ignored them.
>>>
>>>
>>>Yeah, will you ban her going to the library? Or the internet? You
>>>can get all of Lovecraft there.
>>>
>>Why is it so unreasonable for parents to keep an eye on what books
>>their kids are reading? They know what their kids are like, and what
>>they are capable of handling. It's no different than monitoring what
>>they watch on TV or at the movies.
Piggybacking: my parents didn't try to monitor my TV or
movie-watching much, either. In fairness, I grew up in the pre-cable
era, so I had the three networks, PBS, and two UHF stations to choose
from on TV. No Sopranos back then.
>
>
>Exactly. (parent of one, who has proven highly sensitive to some
>books.) We'd originally had a hands-off sort of policy figuring if
>something was too old for her or otherwise unsuitable she wouldn't be
>interested. Then the nightmares or crying fits started, even over
>apparently innocuous books like ... oh, one was Ibbotson's _Aunts_
>book. So we started paying more attention, pre-reading, and opining
>on whether we thought her reading it right now was a good idea and
>telling her what was in it that might cause trouble. ("Aslan's
>death being ok was one pre-warning item for TLTW&TW.)
I never really had nightmares or crying fits based on what I read, so
the hands-off policy pretty much worked.
In fact, I could be forgetting, but I am pretty sure that the only
thing that I saw/read/watched that caused a nightmare was a TV show
which I am pretty sure was called PUEBLO about the capture of the
American spy ship and subsequent mistreatment of the crew. If this is
it -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070573/ -- I was nine at the time I
saw it. I remember it being somewhat disturbing when I saw it, but
then waking up crying and screaming that night.
You could say that it was a mistake to allow me to see it, but in fact
my dad watched it with me.
I can see that if a kid constantly wakes up screaming and crying, you
might want to make an effort to monitor their reading. In my case,
however, I suspect my parents would have had a hard time keeping up
with my reading.