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So, in my last post, I asked some questions about monitoring the books our children read. And then I focused on how a good parent implements her intentions after answering those questions. In this post, I will go back to the question of what makes a book good or bad.
Good books are those we read for entertainment, edification, and education (but not necessarily all three in the same book). Ideally, my children (and I!) will read many books that are”virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy.” [Rosalie and I must be on the same wavelength because I had written this before I saw her comment on the previous post]. Many books are not praiseworthy because they are mindless fluff and/or poorly written. Many other books are not lovely or of good report.
As revealed by Therese and Robin’s comments, there are at least two senses in which a book can be bad: a) it can be objectionable because it is inappropriate, either inappropriate in general [not virtuous, not of good report, not praiseworthy] or inappropriate for a certain age group or particular child or b) it can be of poor quality in the sense that it does not have content worth reading or in the sense that it is poorly written [not lovely, not praiseworthy]. Correspondingly, there are two ways in which books can be good. a) They can be appropriate in the sense that they are not objectionable (a pathetically weak sense of good, to be sure) or b) they can be well written and have content worth reading [lovely, of good report, and praiseworthy].
After reading your thoughtful comments on my previous post, I was surprised to find that I may be the biggest censorship advocate in the group. As I said before, where books are concerned, I think it is better to err on the side of restricting too little rather than too much. However, I disagree with Zina’s comment that “there’s probably nothing *too* bad within the spectrum of what Amelia’s likely to read.” I think there’s quite a bit of bad stuff out there (yikes, look at the covers of the magazines at the grocery store), in the sense that there are a lot of books that would be inappropriate for Amelia to read ever, and even more that are inappropriate for her to read right now.
I was inspired to write my first post about censorship after finishing the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I had never read it before and found it as I was searching through reviews looking for books that would be good for Amelia. Let me be clear, I really liked A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Although it isn’t always “lovely” in the most literal sense (because the heroine’s life is difficult as are the lives of those she is closest to), it was praiseworthy. I would give it a good report! However, I do not want Amelia to read it. Not yet. And especially if we don’t read it together. I do hope that she will read it in a couple of years. Tree falls in my “inappropriate at this age” category. Amelia is ten years old. The heroine of Tree has to face some adult issues fairly early in her life. Amelia doesn’t. She has time enough.
I am interested in whether any of you have read Tree and would take issue with me. I wonder whether my stand is silly (in a sense it’s not a big deal because Amelia isn’t begging to read it, but the issue of what it is okay for her to read comes up again and again). Like Zina, I was also a precocious reader. My mother did a good job of teaching me which books to seek out and which to avoid, but still–I read some books that I would no doubt judge as inappropriate for Amelia. As Zina mentioned, it is difficult to identify or label the specific harm. Also, children are naturally curious. (Advanced readers are perhaps even more curious than most children. That’s part of why they read). The forbidden is even more interesting . . . I know all that. And I am continually surprised at the subject matters my young children are introduced to through my addiction to National Public Radio. Is sheltering the young even possible in our world? Does what they read matter? Especially in mild (inappropriate at this age) cases like Tree?
I know that arguments can be made in both directions. Like so much of parenting for me, the worry will continue regardless of which path I choose. It will just change it’s object: What if she’s too sheltered? What if she’s unprepared? What if I cause her to rebel? What if she grows up too fast? What if she becomes cynical before ever being both mature and happy?
Two specific categories of books that I worry about for Amelia are books centered around romance and books with sexual content. Given the state of our culture, I think even fairly young children need to know a lot of facts, and Amelia knows how women get babies. However, despite my commitment to knowledge for my children on this subject, I do not think novels are a good way for children to gain the information they need. First, although I believe Amelia should know the facts now, I hope the part of her life where these facts are hers is a decade distant. This isn’t information she needs to review frequently. Second, the books I am concerned about seldom portray the reality I would hope for for my daughter: long term married loving monogamous commitment. Since that reality is seldom portrayed, I am not eager for her to spend any significant time familiarizing herself with alternate competing possibilities.
I believe light romance can have its place. I am not about to ban Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. There are good reasons why romance is an attractive genre for both girls and women. Light romance can be fun and entertaining. In addition it is often a wonderful vehicle for excellent (and educational) historical fiction. That said, Amelia is ten. I think much of the romance reading should wait. Books that focus too much on young love—kissing and dating in the high school and college set—are harmful, not so much because they are outright objectionable, but because it’s just not time yet. Amelia won’t be allowed to date for six more years and I hope that it will be at least a decade before she marries. I want her to walk towards those years, not run. The next few years will bring the pull of urges that will tempt her to believe that her life should revolve solely around attracting romantic attention, that her worth is her value as someone’s lover. I don’t need books to introduce her to these feelings or to the world of romantic relationships before she feels its tug herself.
What do you think? Do you take issue with my characterization of good and bad books? Do you agree or disagree that knowledge of some things can come too early?
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11 Responses to “Good Books, Bad Books”
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You make me want to raise kids again, though thoughtfully and intentionally this time. Thanks for enveloping me in regret!
Mark
Just wanted to give the link to an interesting article I came across the other day, which is kind of related to the other post but approaches the issue from kind of the opposite direction (although it has more to do with the “indoctrination” issue than morality issues): http://newhumanist.org.uk/2087
I read Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but I can’t remember what in there might be inappropriate for a 10-yr-old (I read it as an adult), so can’t be helpful there, sorry! (Hey, have you guys read I Capture the Castle? I read it around the same time as Tree, so you reminded me of it, too. I think it’d pass all your criteria, and I enjoyed it … even though there was a tiny bit of mild romance at the end …)
OK, I have way too much to say here, I think. For the most part, I agree with you. I definitely want my children to avoid anything sexually inappropriate, lost cause as that may be. I know that I discovered a couple of adult romance novels about the time I was 13 and boy, did they have more information than I needed to have at that time! I will always be on the lookout that my children are not reading some of the stuff that is available out there in the same way that I will not let them watch movies I feel are inappropriate. I don’t consider this “censorship” any more than I think that not letting them eat a diet of junk food and candy is censorship. I consider it good parenting.
Other than that, I think we should leave the world of books wide open for our children to pick from. When you read a really good book, no one has to tell you that it is good. You can feel it. You feel good, satisfied, just like you feel better after a healthy nutritious meal than you do after eating all three flavors of cheesecake on the dessert table at that wedding reception last weekend. However, I’ve felt kind of sick to my stomach after reading several “classics” that are supposed to be great literature but to me just seem really depressing. I’m glad I read them so that I would know why they are considered important, but I will never go back and read them again (examples: The Grapes of Wrath, Crime and Punishment, Of Mice and Men). Tastes differ. They might not like everything you like. That’s not bad, just different. Even one person can have a broad range of interests. I love Jane Austen novels, but I also love sword and sorcery adventures. I enjoy delving into something deep and heart-rending (Amy Tan, Girl With a Pearl Earring), but boy, I sure laughed my head off over Bridget Jones’ Diary.
If you enjoyed it, it was good. If you learned something, it was good. If you laughed, it was good. If you cried, it was good. Even books that have settings or situations or characters that are not “good” or squeaky clean–with violence, infidelity, abuse, dishonesty–can be good books if they teach us something about human nature. One important thing I want to note; we are NOT what we read. Just because we read a story with adultery in it doesn’t make us adulterers anymore than a person who enjoys reading murder mysteries is likely to become a murderer themselves. As adults, should we avoid books with salacious, detailed sex scenes and glorified gory violence? Yes. Should we avoid books that have sex and violence in a context that is important to the book’s plot or character development? No, I don’t think so.
When it comes to guiding my children’s book choices, I hope to approach it in a way that is not domineering and tyrannical (“You are not allowed to read THAT book!”). I already talk freely with my children about the standards of the world vs. our standards as members of the LDS church. Whenever I see something on TV or a billboard or magazine that goes against our standards, and see that my kids are paying attention to it (i.e. I don’t call their attention to it if they aren’t looking at it), I might say something like, “She dresses differently than we do. Why do you think that is?” and then lead that discussion into why choose to dress modestly. It’s the same with books,although I haven’t gotten into anything that is controversial in that way yet. Right now, I’m not worried about romance, I’m more worried about whether I should let Parley read a book called “Butt Wars” and its sequel, “Attack of the Buttasauras.” I hate potty humor, personally, but hey, he’s a ten-year-old boy. Let him laugh it up a bit.
Therese, I thought the article you linked to was super interesting. It was funny because I come at the issue from the perspective of someone who feels like it is difficult to raise children to be believers. I tend to assume that the easiest thing in the world would be to raise secular children. Just do nothing. This was an interesting look at the other side.
Robin: You said, “I will always be on the lookout that my children are not reading some of the stuff that is available out there in the same way that I will not let them watch movies I feel are inappropriate. I don’t consider this ‘censorship.’”
Anytime you actually forbid your child to read a certain book or to see a certain movie, you are censoring that book or movie. Like you, in general I strongly prefer persuasion and encouragement/discouragement (as the case may be) to forbidding or requiring. It works better and is a better way of raising my children to be whole and independent. However, there are limited cases where an outright ban on a truly harmful book or movie is appropriate. In those cases, I say, hooray for censorship! I’ll accept the label. It’s my job as a parent.
I surround my children with good literature and movies, the best of the best. We love movies and books, love to share them, love to talk about them, but I’ve always been extremely selective about the literature and films that we encourage. My criteria? My own keen sense of artistic merit.
Because of this, my children have developed good taste. I knew I had succeeded when my ten-year-old daughter brought me a copy of Animorphs she’d picked up at the school library and said, “Mom, this book just isn’t very well written. I’m not going to finish it.” Recently she spent a week at her cousins’ house and came home complaining about all the boring, stupid television shows and movies she’d been subjected to. She’d been brought up on the good stuff and had no taste for mediocrity.
I don’t censor what my daughter reads, I just have a rule that I will read it too. She knows I will read every book she does. I told her she could read Twilight if she wanted to, but right up front I explained that Bella makes some poor choices, what those poor choices are, and how I expect my daughter to behave differently. She’s decided not to read it right now – she’s busy going through the Harry Potter series again.
Recently, we showed our oldest two children the film version of Phantom of the Opera. The movie is brilliantly done, but it’s a bit sensual so it isn’t one I want to watch every day. My daughter, however, wants to watch it several times a day. I don’t allow that. She’s got better things to do with her time.
I did ask my boys to stop bringing home “Captain Underpants” from the school library. My reason? I just don’t like it and I’m the mom. They could read them at school, I just didn’t want them in the house. On the other hand, much to my surprise, I really like the “Marvel Age” comic books they bring home – especially when I read them aloud using funny voices. My kids are expanding my literature horizons too.
I forgot to mention that my daughter is thirteen years old now.
It has been a long time since I read “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” but I do remember I liked it. I would agree with you that ten is probably a bit young to read it though. I remember that the girl has a boyfriend (can’t remember how intimate they were) and he leaves her and the mother says something about how you never feel the same as you do about the first man you love. (Do you recall this part?) I would rather the first introductions to romance in books be in books like Anne of Green Gables rather than broken/unhealthy relationships.
I wanted to comment on what Robin said about how we are not what we read. While you may not be an adulterer if you read a book about someone who commits adultery, I definitely think there is a difference in reading a book that glorifies adultery vs exploring the serious consequences of adultery. A lot of tv shows glorify adultery (can’t think of a book off hand). “Anna Karinina” is about a woman who commits adultery and suffers for it. While I would never recommend that my kids watch “Friends”, I would recommend Anna Karinina to them (when they are a bit older).
Pmom, you always start such great discussions. I hope we can discuss in person one of these days!
Yet another fun article – this time on racism in “classic” kids books: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/jul/22/childrens-classics-unsuitable-kids
1) I definitely read some books that were too grown-up for me. Particularly in middle school, I think. So it is a danger…
2) On the flip-side, I knew they weren’t quite right when I read them, and generally I stopped.
One series in particular, I read the first two books (in 8th grade), decided they were veering into dangerous territory, and didn’t read the third and fourth even though I desperately wanted to know what happened next. I came across the series years later– after college, I believe– read them through, and thought “Wow. That wasn’t really censor-worthy!” Good grief.” But upon reading this post and your previous one, I’ve actually realized that it *was* dangerous territory by comparison to the books I had read up to that point, and it doesn’t surprise me that I thought I’d better not start the third book– I was afraid it might *get* inappropriate, and I didn’t want to have to try to convince myself to stop mid-book.
I could pretend I was virtuous to not go on with books that weren’t good for me, but I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t that. It was just that *some* of the things I wouldn’t read were very clear cut. As for the rest… it was easy to recognize the “wrong” books because of their contrast to the good books I usually read. I think some of this was due to my mother’s influence in my early reading choices, and some of it due to having a very good elementary school librarian.
Mrs. Rice was my elementary school librarian, and I remember her putting effort into helping me choose books. I had a terrible tendency to read quickly and therefore always need something new… yet at the same time I hated trying to choose books for myself, and never knew where to start. Poor Mrs. Rice spent far too much time starting me on new authors and new series… sending me through the Newbery Award shelves and a list of recommended books, through a series of biographies…
I think a great deal of my later awareness in choosing my own books (I don’t have memories of parental censorship from 5th grade on, so if it was occurring, it was very muted) was rooted in the fact that my childhood books were well chosen. And of course I knew very clearly that certain things just shouldn’t be in books that I read, so if I came across them, the book was bad for me and I’d better return it.
3) Like you, I read voraciously. For the parents of readers like you, me, and Amelia, I really don’t think it is practical for a parent to read all that the child reads… unless the amount of reading is limited. I think there probably *is* a limit to how much reading a child should do… but I’d set that limit pretty high, myself. (Reading constantly in my childhood certainly benefited my later life in many ways.)
4) As a side note, I *do* remember reading Nancy Drew books when I was *very* young (because at that point I tended to pick up whatever my big sister was reading, even if I was four years younger and she tended to read ahead of her age group) having nightmares because of them, and deciding I’d better stop reading my sister’s books because it turned out she was right about me being too little to read them.
Is it too late to comment on this? It looks like I missed it when you first wrote it. (I followed your Facebook post about “goge” over here. It sounds like you need the gift of tongues at your house as much as we do at ours.)
On re-reading my last comment I do agree with you (and disagree with what I first said) that you can’t just assume that your kids won’t come across inappropriate things. I think I was just projecting my own good luck so far in that my kids are mostly only drawn to things that are geared to kids. Dean’s spent a lot of money this summer keeping us stocked up on Alex Rider and the Last Apprentice and the Ranger’s Apprentice (these all tend to have long hold lists at the library and he doesn’t want the kids to have to wait for them) and we’ve also been reading Dianna Wynne Jones and the Percy Jackson books and other things in this genre, and although I shake my head at the expense, really it’s been nice that my kids are well-supplied with fun books that don’t contain much that concerns me. (There is some swearing in Alex Rider, but I think that’s about as bad as it gets.)
I think I just actually don’t have a great answer about what kids should and shouldn’t read, because, as I said, I was a very precocious reader and some of it I regret but some of it I was more able to handle than one might think. I even think there’s something about reading about mature subjects, IF they’re handled well by the author (are intrinsic to the story and presented in a moral context, etc.) that makes them much easier to cope with than if they’re enacted on a big screen. I did read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when I was not much older than Amelia and although I don’t remember much about it, I do remember two things: a) there was a yucky/scary scene (a man exposes himself to her, right?) and b) overall, the book was redemptive and left me feeling good about life and about a person’s ability to cope. So the mature stuff in the book was handled in such a way that although the bad stuff stayed with me, more than that, the girl’s power to overcome it (to thrive in spite of a blighted environment) also stayed with me.
I also mentioned that I read Roots very young–probably too young–but again, I’m not sure that was all bad, although it was traumatic: I thought I was just reading a story about a young man living a happy life in his native Africa, and when he was suddenly kidnapped and permanently taken away from that, I was as taken by surprise as he was–and sobbed for a whole afternoon. Sobbed and sobbed. (I wonder if I was the only person ever to read that book without knowing its topic in advance.) I don’t know that I would want my kids to be that traumatized by something they read, but I don’t regret that particular emotional lesson. But there’s also rape and other stuff in that book though that I wouldn’t want a young kid of mine reading about.
So, yeah, I’m not much help. I do think that keeping an open dialogue is vital, and that a way can be found to address almost any topic at an age-appropriate level. (Not that it’s always easy to gauge what level is appropriate. As you pointed out, asking questions is a good starting point, though.)
As far as judging good books from bad books, my favorite tool for this was invented by one of my BYU English professors, Bill Eggington. At the time that I was in one of his classes, he was visiting from BYU Hawaii but I think he’s now full-time at the Y. He used a grid with four quadrants and across one axis he had +power and -power and down the other axis he had +love -love. (I hope I described that in a way that wasn’t too revealing of my extreme lack of math fluency.) By “power” he meant good writing and an effective message, and by “love” he meant a redemptive/charitable message. So one quadrant is plus power/plus love, another is minus power/plus love, another is plus power/minus love, and the last is minus power/minus love. In the minus power/minus love quadrant you’d place books that are poorly written and unredemptive–drivel, cheap paperbacks. Minus power/plus love would be sentimental, syrupy things and didactic novels–such as the worst of LDS fiction aimed at teens; things that are meant to teach a message but whose lack of artistry undermines their effectiveness. Plus power/minus love are effective artistically but don’t inspire or nourish the mind and soul. And plus power/plus love are those books like those that have been mentioned here that stay with you and make you want to come back to them and share them with your children.
Of course, which quadrant any book belongs in is completely subjective; I’ve just found this tool a useful way to explain which works I like and which I reject–because the only books I endorse wholeheartedly are those in the plus power/plus love category.
I do think that a book can be depressing but still redemptive if it shows the truth about how the world functions without the Gospel, and therefore makes you glad you do have the Gospel. But how much of that sort of thing a kid can handle is a harder question.
Thanks for your patience with my ramblings. Maybe I’ll have stronger opinions on exactly where to draw the censorship line as my kids get a little older and start foraging deeper in my bookshelves or at the library.