On Violence and Children’s Stories
A wonderful post by Ben Myers on the role of violence in children’s stories. The key quote:
There are people – mostly people with PhDs who have never met a real child – who say the old fairytales and adventures are too violent. For my part, I tend to avoid contemporary children’s writing because it is, for the most part, not violent enough. Only an expert could think that what children really need is stories about tolerance, multiculturalism, sensitivity to difference, and all the abominable boredom of what is called ‘life skills’.
The stories I remember most from my childhood, the ones that had the greatest impact on me, are stories full of violence, bravery, and very little adult supervision. In other words, exactly the kind of world I wanted to live in. I wanted to ride the Mississippi with Huck and Jim, or discover the Kansas prairie with Laura, or confront a dragon with Bilbo, and especially walk through a wardrobe and fight an evil witch.
