twilight saga...appropriate for primary school????

[Tulsie]

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to get opinions really....

My 10 yr old daughter skipped home gleefully this afternoon clutching the first twilight saga novel that she'd picked up from the book corner at school. I've had a look and it is indeed a school library book.....

Here's my question to those of you who have read it...is a book like this really age appropriate for primary school??

All opinions welcomed!

Thanks

Tulsie

[enjoy]

I would say be grateful she didn't pick the hunger games 😏

Sorry l am not very helpful, haven't read Twilight myself.

Just read the hunger games and thought kids that age should def not read it. I would not allow that my kids!

And here is rhe point, are we allowed, shall we interfere here to protect them?

Most kids in year 6 have read it.

[oimissus]

I would be very surprised at a primary school stocking these. Not so surprised at a 10-year-old reading them, I alays wanted to read stuff that was 'too old' for me. The main issue I have with the Twilight saga is that Bella is the most awful passive character. Have a read, it's turgid stuff. But really, it's YA stuff, so not for a primary school to stock, I would have a read and then have a word.

[Bellenden Belle]

Many moons ago, when I was a ten year old, a book called Forever by Judy Blume made its way around class.

There wasn't a single girl who didn't read it.

At ten, sex is starting to be a topic. That doesn't mean you're contemplating 'doing' it - but chances are you know girls who have started their periods, others will have had the "talk", and it's definitely a topic of discussion - albeit confused, misinformed debate.

Better to let your daughter read the book and then chat together about it afterwards. In many ways the culture I grew up in - where books were read but shrouded in secrecy - was far more unhealthy.

[sillywoman]

Hunger games was the book that finally got my reluctant reader son reading enthusiastically at 10or 11. There's no sexy stuff, so to my mind it's absolutely appropriate. No wore than most of the Harry Potter books.

Twighlight saga? Hmm, not so sure - a bit adult in it's themes for primary to my mind.

[enjoy]

No, not sex in the hunger games.

Just pure violence, killing each other in great detail to the joy

of the audience.

Naa

[oimissus]

yes, the premiss behind the Hunger Gmes is really very grim - children set to kill each other off as a game once a year? That's a lot darker than certainly the early HPs, if not all of them.

[StraferJack]

I was reading stuff waaaay darker than twiglet and Hunger Games well before 10

You know that kids relish darkness don't you? They know you don't want them to read it. Not allowing them? You're deluding yourself. They will read it. And they will be fine

[sanity girl]

I'm with StraferJack on this. When on holiday with my family aged 10 or so I read the Norman Mailer and Fay Weldon novels my parents had brought with them. Both wildly unsuitable. The Fay Weldon featured sex and infidelity but I was more shocked by the description of a car crash. The Norman Mailer I believe featured a man doing something obscene with a decapitated corpse. I can't really remember. I was not traumatised in any way whatsoever, just a little shocked by the car crash bit because it was something I could imagine in real life. My daughter is 7 and has already read all the Harry Potter books - the many deaths in the later books didn't bother her at all.

[Jacks50]

If I remember correctly there's no sex in the twilight until they get married (spoiler alert!) which is along way down the road - maybe book 4 or 5. (not that I've read them all or anything)

There's an implied sexual tension though but that would probably go over a 10 year old head.

That said, it contains adult themes which I wouldn't think were appropriate for a 10 year old.

Here's a few comments - http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/5youngadultbooks/a/Twilight-Series-For-What-Age.htm

Very surprised its in a primary school library!

[civilservant]

from my own experience at age 10, I know that the best way to get your child to read a book is to tell them not to!

also from my own experience, I know that if one's not old enough to 'get' it, then one won't 'get' it (having read Lady Chatterley's Lover at a very unsuitable age and then finding a very different book when I returned to it some years later...)

One of my problems with Twilight is the passive female role-models, but I have to confess that I haven't read them properly because I find them so impossibly crap. The Hunger Games on the other hand offers girls a template for a positive self-image, besides lessons about friendship, trust, redemption and other good stuff. The violence is designed to reel them in and keeps them wanting more!

[minder]

Hi Tulsie, be brave and make a complaint to the school.

I did when my youngest at primary school brought home a book for reading which I thought was a bit near the mark.

Their reply was that they thought my daughter was mature enough to read the book and so that was ok!

This was 5/6 years ago by the way.

[oimissus]

I'm not saying that children won't or even shouldn't read these kinds of books, the question was, should they be stocked in a primary school's library, to which I think the answer is no. Some children will be fine, some won't but the fact of the matter is these books are YA books, that's the section they'll be in in the library or a bookshop, not in the children's section. I was reading stuff out of the teenage section in the library way before I was a teenager, but they were still in the teenage section, not the children's.

And yes, my issue with Twilight is not anything to do with sex or violence, it's Bella and her dreadful passivity. Sookie Stackhouse is a far punchier heroine (though a 10yo should definitely not be reading those!).

[bawdy-nan]

Maybe OP should read it before making a complaint or approach to school. That way you can also be on hand to discuss / reflect any issues or ideas your 10 year old might have.

I think there's all kind of material used in schools of which I don't approve (cf the gobsmackingly masochistic anti-revolutionary "Giving Tree"; the depressing snobbery, sexism and know your place Christianity of CS Lewis; the banal depth free and badly written rip offs of books like Diary of a Wimpy kid )but the top end of primary school is when children's reading starts to fly and sometimes fall. I think that offering a really wide range of books (even ones linked to films and tv) is a great idea.

At 10 children are becoming more exposed to the "adult" world both in their imagination and in their media / real world experience - practising their ideas and testing out their reactions in the context of literature is no bad thing, I think.

[Tulsie]

Thank you so much everyone for such fantastic feedback and opinions.

I have read it myself and kind of agree with all of you in that the girls characters are gobsmackingly passive, that the bits my daughter is too young to understand will probably go straight over her head, that she'll undoubtedly read it whatever I say and will be so much more likely to want to if I make a fuss, lastly I also read wildly unsuitable books at her age....

Interestingly, since my original message I haven't said anything to my daughter about the book, just listened in the same way as always when she's wanted to talk about it, and already there's been a definite cooling off! I'm sure she'll finish it as she did pick up that I wasn't overly happy about her reading it but I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't bother with the sequel.

Having said all that I'm still not convinced it's appropriate for a primary school library to stock.

Interesting times ahead.....!!

Thanks again everyone

T x

[Otta]

StraferJack Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I was reading stuff waaaay darker than twiglet and

> Hunger Games well before 10

Like what? (genuinely interested)

[StraferJack]

Just because characters are passive in bokos, doesn't mean the readers accept that as A Good Thing - they can be quite critical

Otta - much of it might be dismissed as "just" comics - but a lot of the extremely gory American horror commics (can't remember names), 2000ad

Not waaay before 10 but i remeber reading The Shining and Salems Lot around then as well

I also found some of my dad's books which were badly written airport-fiction but full of vile people being horrible do each other in business/bed/homes. Couldn't tell you the names of any of them tho

[Otta]

Good point about graphic novels / comics.

I think I'd be happy that a 10 year old picked up the book rather than wanting to watch the film.

I must say I was NOT a reader as a kid. Started loving books as a teenager, but even then didn't make enough time for reading. I read every day now, and I love seeing my little girl's love for books, which she has inherited form her mum.

[Otta]

But I did collect and read certain comics, so I guess I should give myself more credit, I just never thought of it as "reading" because "reading" seemed terribly boring.

[minder]

Agree with you Otta about reading as a kid.

I couldn't wait until the next weekly issue of Misty, Bunty and Tammy and running round my local shop to get it.

Misty was a favourite.

I suddenly realised there was a library next door to the newsagents!

[Giacomelli]

I have never read the books but saw one of the films and thought it was one of the slowest, most boring things I had ever watched. I personally wouldn't discourage reading it. At that age I was reading lots of gory Point Horror and suggestive but sloppy Point Romances. I later went on to better stuff as realised after a couple of years the female characters were so dull!

[david_carnell]

I used to read Point Horror too. Looking back they were unbelievaby tame.

My parents weren't very savvy about what was appropriate and I once convinced my Mum to buy me a James Herbert triple-volume. Suffice to say that was a very different level of horror story. I think I made it through the first two or three chapters of the Fog (sharing some rather graphic sex scenes with friends) and then had to abandon it.

Children find their own level in their own way. It's not like tv.

I returned to Herbert in my twenties and just found it rather uninspiring tbh.

[LondonMix]

I?m not really sure there is anything age inappropriate about the books, particularly not the first one. Kids intuitively act out fantasies surrounding romantic love (boyfriends and girlfriends) and play house from a very young age (well before 10). I?m pretty sure that by age 10 everyone I know had some understanding of sex and by the age of 13 a lot of my peers were engaging in some form of sexual activity (not full on intercourse necessarily mind you). Kids are not nearly as innocent or as fragile as they seem and like others have said, the things they aren?t ready for simply won?t compute.