Children. Children are wonderful. They are literally the future of the world. We are damaging their future by challenging and ultimately banning books. Due to challenging and banning of books, more and more children aren’t allowed to read certain books. Granted, I agree when it comes to parenting to restrict what your children read depending on their age, but, once they reach that age of eighteen, they’re pretty much free to read whatever they want. Personally, I think the age is nine because at that point in my life, my mother had no say in what I was reading at that time. But, children are the most important people in the world. They’re going to be the future and they have to live with the consequences of our actions.
I don’t have any children, but my cousins do. One is only seven months old, so she can’t read yet, but her parents do read to her. I know they’re not picking up “In Cold Blood” by Capote and reading that to her. I do believe that there are books that are good for certain age groups, but once a child reaches that age where they want to read whatever they want, the parent needs to let them try it. This situation is very complex because it does depend on the values of the parents and I’m not saying this way is right and that way is wrong because, like I said, I don’t have any children, but I do believe that certain books are appropriate for certain ages.
My other cousins have two children who are going to be nine and seven this year. Now, I don’t see them as much as I’d like to, but their parents are pretty liberal when it comes to what their children read. They pretty much let them read whatever they pick up or whatever they get as gifts. Most parents wouldn’t do this. I do know some parents that wouldn’t let their kids watch Nickelodeon when they were growing up because they felt the television shows were too racy for kids… even though the shows were marketed towards children. That just shows the values of parents. They definitely vary between all parents.
I understand that children are very impressionable, but if we don’t let them read certain things, they’ll never know the wonders of Harry Potter or Shakespeare or Frederick Douglass or any of the many great authors that are out there.
J.K. Rowling actually put out a book based on a book that was mentioned in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It is a children’s book that is full of children’s stories… kind of like Mother Goose but focuses on witches and wizards. It’s called The Tales of Beedle the Bard. There are great stories in this book and one of my friends told me that cousin has a son, who is about ten years old. Their cousin doesn’t believe in witchcraft or anything like that, so she doesn’t allow her son to read Harry Potter. My friend read some stories from Beedle the Bard to her young cousin and he loved them. He begged his mother to let him read them along with Harry Potter and while his mother didn’t really agree with it, she let her son try them out. She realized that he was at that age where he’d want to read more and more and she wouldn’t always be able to control what he read. My friend informed me that her cousin started reading the Harry Potter series and found that she enjoyed the books immensely.
That is just one story where the parents come to the understanding that they won’t always have control of their children. There are plenty of stories to the contrary of that one, but it always makes me happy to see that books prevailed.
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