November 05, 2015 
John 
We’ve been going through a bit of a weird reading time lately in the Rudolph household. For the past few weeks, my four-year-old son George has insisted onHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for his bedtime reading, no doubt inspired by his older brother Henry, to whom I’ve been reading all seven books in sequence for about a year now. While I’d like to believe that George is brilliant, precocious, and absorbing every word, the truth is that he consistently falls asleep after 5 pages or so–and since he falls asleep so easily, we aren’t going to discourage the routine!
Meanwhile, seven-year-old Henry wants to know about war–specifically, World War II. And since Dad can’t seem to explain WWII coherently without getting into a lot of evil stuff, he asked if we have any books on it instead, or if he could get some from the library. So it seems we’ve reached that fateful Parenting Moment where we need to think about what kinds of books are appropriate for our kids.
Now, like most of my publishing colleagues, I abhor censorship. One of my proudest projects from my early days at S&S was working with Judy Blume on Places I Never Meant to Be, an anthology that supported the National Coalition Against Censorship. But when it comes to Henry and George, is it right to feel concerned about what they read? Or am I being a total hypocrite if I tell Henry to wait on the war books until he’s older?
Fortunately, Roger Sutton of The Horn Book (and an outspoken anti-censorship advocate) pointed me to this little piece on Book Riot, where the author advocates letting kids discover books without restriction. And after reading it, I realized that I benefited from a laissez-faire book policy when I was a kid, too–discovering Lou Reed’s music in ninth grade led me to William Burroughs, and while I distinctly remember my Mom wasn’t thrilled when I took my copy of Junky on the plane to visit my grandparents in Florida, to her credit she didn’t stop me.
So while I might try to get age-appropriate book from the library on WWII, when Henry starts digging through our own shelves and comes across Ellie Wiesel and Primo Levi, I’m not planning on stopping him. And if George keeps up with Harry Potter through the somewhat disturbing ending, I won’t be the one to stop him either (even if manages to stay awake).
But maybe I’m being unrealistic and/or dogmatic here–how do you handle reading material for your kids? Do you keep an eye on them or give them free reign on your shelves? Where do you draw the line?
The one and only time my mother tried to restrict my reading was when she told me I could read FOREVER by Judy Blume as long as I read the whole thing, but I couldn’t read WIFEY. Needless to say, I stole WIFEY off her shelf and read it and thought it was kind of boring. I was probably about 11-12. I think generally kids will filter their own reading, but there’s nothing wrong with trying to lead them in age appropriate directions, especially when they’re really young and interested in something as complex and evil as WWII. But I don’t have kids, so what do I know?
Favorite book on WWII is a children’s book called Tommy by Bedrich Fritta. The forward is by the son for whom the book was written. His parents were killed in the holocaust, but not before finishing this story.
I cry every time I read the foreward, and smile at the illustrations, knowing what joy it must have brought the husband and wife team to leave behind something so valuable for their son.
I read it to my kids last week and we talked about bullies and superiority – didn’t really go into depth about war.
I’d tell you to get the book, but I don’t think it’s sold in the U.S.
Interesting, isn’t it? How we might diverge with our children from what we were given as a child? I had my dad. He fostered a love of reading in me that despite pressing deadlines, life, and all the rigmarole that goes with both, I still read over 200 books a year. When I’d read every book–some of them multiple times–in the children’s section of my hometown library, my dad introduced me to the head librarian and had her put my name on his library card. With that came the instruction that I was allowed to check out any book in the adult section. I spent two days roaming the shelves before I made my initial selections. Great literature? No. But two books that remain on my favorites list: Mary Stewart’s “The Moonspinners” and Ian Fleming’s “The Spy Who Loved Me.” Was I precocious? Yes. Did I catch all the undercurrents and sexy bits in those books? Yes. Did it damage me? No. Many years later, I made the same decision with my own daughter. She was allowed to ready anything in our house or checked out of the library. She developed a love of history and military stories, has her masters in museum studies, and is a mother herself. I suspect her son will be encouraged just as she and both my husband and I were.
On a side note, when my dad died, he had books checked out from the library. I returned them and discovered my name was still–30 years later–on his library card.
One of the reasons I avoided hard drugs in the 70\’s was reading William Burroughs in high school; I thought, OK, using weed to get through withdrawals makes sense, but if you had the sense of a squashed fly in the road you wouldn\’t be that degraded to begin with. (By the way, I\’ll meet your Lou Reed flush and raise you a Pink Floyd straight-pre-Dark Side Of the Moon, of course) And I think it says something that the only fictional YA WWII book I\’ve seen on the radar this year is an alternative history with werewolves, which is like one of those watered-down PG remakes of The Wicker Man or Carrie. Says a lot about the YA filtration system, none of it good.
I do think you need to censor what a child sees, hears, and reads. People write about and talk about things today that were whispered in our youth…because our parents believed that young shoulders aren’t ready to carry adult burdens. I agree.
I remember hiding my souvenir books from Dachau and other concentration camps, lest my very sensitive second child view the very grisly historical photos of the dead. He would have had nightmares. Similarly, I wish I had vetted my youngest daughter’s reading more closely: long after she left them behind I was annoyed to find many passages in her favorite books that are at odds with the values I’ve tried to promote in our home.
Books should be a parent’s allies in the cause of raising moral, responsible, and kind adults.