You Know, For Kids

Robots and dinosaurs?

QED.

broadly speaking, kids' books and films are about kids. adults are about adults. all to do with identification innit.

and just before you start picking at this, i did say BROADLY SPEAKING.

I disagree Katie, though its not that bad a rule of thumb to suggest that books with kids in is probably for kids (there are some very notable exceptions - Lord Of The Flies is not a kids book). I would look a bit closer at the themes of the item, the tone - is it good vs evil, does good win, is it simplistic, is it sexual. Nearly all fairy tales after all concern adults.

I think I may have got a bit bogged down in this one on those other threads, and I fear the same might happen here. Of course intention (which we don't like to talk about too much) may be a good rule of thumb. If it was made for kids, then it's for kids.

the author iz DEAD ptee!

The "about kids" issue is interesting, because it suggests the way that very grown-ups' books about adult issues (eg 'Huckleberry Finn', the Alice books [although Carroll was writing for a kid, I guess) have, historically, been overlooked or confined to the nursery because they feature child protagonists. (Leslie Fiedler reckons we deem Huck Finn a kid's book as a form of repression because WE CAN'T HANDLE IT'S RAW MYTHIC TRUTH)

My grammar went AWOL for a second there, sorry.

ditto green eggs and ham

Nearly all fairy tales after all concern adults.

true, but the fairy tale form is an incredibly ancient and psychologically complex structure . and if you think about it, hardly any fairy tales are actually "suitable for children" - they are the goriest things going. when i said kids stories have kids in them, i was primarily thinking of Narnia, Spot the Dog, Malory Towers, Bod, Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, the Railway Children... to equate fairy stories with kids lit is WRONG.

intention, though - i was going to mention that. i do think that intention has a large part to play in creating kiddies lit. with LotR Tolkien was trying to create a world that would embody his academic ideas about language and to create a new mythology (myths = related to fairy stories) for England. the Hobbit he wrote for kids, LotR is the adult continuation of that i think.

though what you said about adolescence is interesting. Fairy stories are often about rites of passage and in fact the reading of them is a common rite of passage for the reader - introducing him/her to the idea of archetypes in language and in literature.

actually i've thought of a clever justification of tolkien as adult theme even w/o sex which connects him to HUSSERL and HEIDEGGER hurrah!! more later. ph34r my l4m3n3ss fuXoRs

Oh come on Katie (Paxman-esque style) of course fairy stories are for children. If we are going to use intention that is who they are written for and it is who they are told to and the themes are simplistic down to the Happy Ever After (if there is one). Just because we now deem gore, torture and violence as not being suitable for children does not mean that was always the case - or should be. There is a very strong case for saying that violent fairy tales help children deal with a violent world - which is the one that people certainly did live in.

Yes Mark, I know that the author is dead, and intention is a dodgy thing to bring up, but presentation is going to be part of the art (no art in vacuum after all). So the presentation of a form "for children" - advertised as such, packaged as such, marks this intention out to this day. Which is why I find the Huck Finn comment above so interesting.

of course fairy stories are for children

so why do so many adults still read them (and for that matter Greek myths etc). even more, so why do adult authors constantly write "updated" or "modern" fairy tales see e.g. Angela Carter? you can't tell me that the appeal of fairy stories and fairy story structures is limited to children only.

Childrens books/films all about moral education of child i.e good v evil, loyalty to friends, greed/laziness are punished etc. Adult books/films, rejection/ distortion or realisation that what you learnt as a child isn't necessarily true.

adult lit/films about those themes that Billy Dods said were for kiddies: Bonfire of the Vanities, Macbeth, The Craft...

Ooh Pete: source for Othello = Cinthio, BTW.

But I refer you to Tom's question above, what can adults get out of childrens literature and film? Nostalgia, the search for happier times where absolutes existed and good triumphs with strong moral messages missing in adult lit / adult life. And often more action to boot.

Angela Carter, Tanith Lee style rewrites of said myths are doing almost the reverse of this. They are explorations of adult themes hidden within these archetypes, discussions of the assumptions made - the cosy made complex. Fairy Tales by the way may prepare children for adolescence, but by the time adolescence has set on I think we have left them behind (refering to another point above).

Ancient myths of course open a whole different (ahem - Pandoras) box. Not written for children but often written to explain the world or as history. History is not written solely for children, and certainly the most enduring works from said canon (Homer) are more complex than just the gods moving in mysterious ways.

are the alice books for children?

Yes.

so why do markS and Sarah love Pokemon and i love Powerpuff gurls then EH?!?!?!?!?!!?!!

i am infected by the infantilism dribbled on me by tom and pete

You should feel deep and unabiding shame for your infantilistic writing, all of the sites with proper writing would never stoop to such jargon as "wuv". Tsk, tsk...

I would say that any book or film directly mentioning or graphically showing anal sex would not be a children's book. But maybe in Canada.

wuv = love but w/o the anal sex

The Alice books were clearly written for children - or at least one child - but it takes a pretty precocious child to understand all that's going on in there. Ditto The Little Prince.

Ditto for The Simpsons?

For kids?
I wasn't allowed to have these when I was little.
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