I read To Kill A Mockingbird when I was 7 (soon after having been taken to see the movie), and I don’t think it was “inappropriate” in any way. I found it fascinating, and deeply impressive – reading it and seeing the movie were probably the first time I learned anything much about racism. Obviously, the fact that the protagonist was a child made it much easier for me to relate to it.
Interesting discussion. One thing you should know is that Little Woman was written as a book for young girls (it was intended to help them learn to be “good wives”, as the second half of the book was titled). And when it was published in 1880, if a five year girl was capable of reading it, it would have been considered a more than appropriate choice. Children used to be given much more credit for understanding the complexities of life than we give them now. Perhaps this has to do with the Disneyfication of the Brothers Grimm. I can tell you, as a children’s librarian, and I have seen studies to back this up, picture books use are more likely to use a diverse, and archaic vocabulary than popular adult fiction (think James Patterson). Just this week I was reading a book at Story Time where the characters go to visit a wheelwright, a cooper, and a fletcher, all great words, but not common ones anymore. And last week we did a book about what does red smell like, what does yellow taste like, what does orange feel like? It is a pretty difficult concept but three year olds get it and are even capable of pushing it onward.
It is interesting in its time that “Little Women” would have been considered appropriate for a young girl, at that time there still was the notion in some quarters that kids were ‘little adults’, so a book detailing the duties of a wife wouldn’t be so out of place with a young girl.
If a 5 year old can read “Little Women” then let them.
A child (or any age really) only brings to a story their own experiences. Death affects me now but at a young age it just wasn’t in my play book. We flushed the gold fish but other than that my “death” experiences didn’t go far.
So when someone died in a book it mostly meant they wouldn’t be in the next chapter.
I read “Hans Christian Andersen” tales as a kid. Unfortunately. Now those I remember in detail.
Can’t get more morbid than that!
Ever seen primers from the colonial era, especially from Massachusetts Bay? These were books designed to teach the alphabet. Typical beginning as the illustration for the letter A "In Adam’s Fall, We Sinned All. " It was common for children to die before the age of 10 and the primary purpose of “children’s literature” was to make sure they died in a state of grace.
Like many here, I was a precocious reader once I got started. I didn’t learn to read until 1st grade but went from 0 to 80 pretty quickly reading adult books within months of learning to read. I read voraciously. It was like a light switch flipped and a whole world was opened to me.
Like @alh, in addition to going to the small local library, I read whatever was around the house. I read A LOT, which was easier to do back in the day with no scheduled activities besides 4H and only 1 black and white tv in the house with 4 channels, no computers, social media, and long, cold winters. I must have been 6 or 7 reading Little Women and Little Men. I read Papillon around the age of 7/8 because it was in the house and being talked about. I remember reading Portnoy’s Complaint and Fear of Flying around 9 which are quite racy. Go Ask Alice sticks out in my mind around then. A lot of Vonnegut and John Irving. I got quite an education on all matters from books. My parents never restricted what I was reading probably due to a combo of personal philosophy and the kind of benign neglect that was more typical of parenting back then and having older siblings who were already there.
Did some of these make me sad or deal with subject matter that was more mature than my chronological age? Sure, and that is probably why I remember these books out of the hundreds read. But, I cut my teeth on those Grimm’s fairy tales others mention and I grew up on a farm so was well aware of the circle of life. It didn’t really phase me and gave me quite an education.
Did anyone who read Little Women at age 7 or younger relate to Meg? Is she just supposed to be annoying?
I realize that I am in the minority on this thread, but I was selective about the books that QMP read at a very young age. In my view, 1984 normalizes government misrepresentations, terror by authorities, jingoism and capitulation in the face of injustice–not Orwell’s intent, I understand, but I think that it subtly shifts expectations in that direction. (Again, not at all Orwell’s intent). I suppose the one good thing about reading it at 13 was that I then viewed high-school pep rallies as quite similar to the Two Minutes Hate. Not for my 7-year-old. Books where rape is a central element? Not for my 7-year-old. Portnoy’s Complaint? I read it when I was about 18 or 19, and I still can’t get the liver scene out of my head. Perhaps it was all supposed to be a fantasy? Also, why is Fifty Shades of Gray seen as inappropriate, if none of these are?
I honestly think that the minds of children are different, having spent a good amount of time talking with relatives of the next generation.
Did anyone read Anne of Green Gables at a very young age? If so, what did you make of Marilla?
Am catching up to this thread, so you all may have moved on.
I read Little Women when I was 8. I was completely confused about what had happened to Beth. She was very very sick and then here’s the end of the chapter:
So naturally I assumed she’d gotten better after all. Except she wasn’t in the story any more. Oops.
The first literary death I remember was Jack the dog in *The Little House * book dies. My mother was reading them to us. I was probably 6 or 7. We all cried.
My younger son read The Lord of the Rings for the first time in third grade. I thought he was too young to really get it. (FWIW I read it for the first time in 6th grade.) But really he was fine. He loved different things about it for sure. And he read it again the next year. And the year after that and the year after that. (Just as I did.) And each time he noticed different things about it. He’ll always care more about Legolas and Gimli than I do. And I’ll always think Aragorn is more interesting than he will.
I’m more worried about parents who give Ender’s Game to six year olds because after all he’s six. Never mind what he does in the very first chapter of the book.
Sex, I’m less worried about. 
The first literary death that I remember was that of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl. I was three. My father was reading it to me as a bedtime story, without being familiar with it. We both burst out crying.
When he was 6 or 7, my spouse either read a book or watched a movie that had a dog that died in it. For several years afterwards, he could be brought to tears by someone saying “Bugle Ann.”
Any takers on your opinion of Marilla from Anne of Green Gables, if you read it when you were very young?
I’d much rather not have to discuss rape with a 6-year-old before the young person understands about sex in a loving relationship.
For the advocates of “read anything,” . . . “well, not exactly anything” why do you stop short of Fifty Shades of Gray? I don’t understand the philosophy behind that–it just seems to me to be setting the bar differently, but still having a bar. I am not asking to be a devil’s advocate. I’d really like to know why you censor some things for children, if generally you would not. (I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Gray–Grey?–myself, and don’t intend to, but there has been enough media coverage that I have a general idea about it. Enough to avoid it.)
For my part, I really disliked Marilla when I read Anne of Green Gables. I was probably around 8. Later, I watched the TV version with QMP. I admired Colleen Dewhurst for managing to bring out sympathetic aspects of Marilla as a character, and give her a deeper portrayal than had been in the book. Imagine my surprise when I re-read the book, and discovered that it wasn’t Dewhurst’s invention, it was in the book!
Another example: I read William Saroyan’s “The Time of Your Life” twice, once as a high-school sophomore and again as a university sophomore. The first time, I did not understand it, and did not like it. The second time, I thought it was both hysterically funny and quite insightful. The play did not change–only the reader did. (I can imagine high-school sophomores who are ready for it, especially these days. But I was not.)
Perhaps it is a salutary experience to have such an obvious indication of missing something in an earlier reading. But otherwise, I did not get anything out of it that could not have been postponed.
What’s wrong with setting the bar differently, but still having a bar? This isn’t an all-or-nothing thing, after all—just because some of us think that Little Women is fine for some 5-year-olds doesn’t mean that we are logically required to think that The Story of O also is.
If people are not complaining about my choices, then it’s fine. I read all of the posts that say the rough analog of, “I read ‘Of Mice and Men’ when I was 5, and it was fine,” as implicitly critical. Maybe they weren’t intended in that way. But there did seem to be sort of a whisper of “censorship” about them. I would be even more uncomfortable with a 5-year-old reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” than reading “Little Women.”
Interpolating between dfbdfb’s suggestions, does anyone think that “The Scarlet Letter” would be a good book for a a very bright kindergartner? Or “Crime and Punishment”? I didn’t say anything to the young person, her parents, or anyone else about the choice of books–I agree that it’s for them to decide.
Returning to the main topic of the thread, putting together the views of several posters: I am inclined to agree that mathematical prodigies are more common than musical prodigies. I think that musical prodigies do exist–otherwise, I don’t know how to classify Mozart.
I agree that there are elements of music that are likely to escape a 5- or 6-year-old, even if the child is technically proficient at a piece. Is the objection about the child’s understanding focused on elements that come from music theory, or is it based on emotional reactions or life experiences?
It seems to me that reading a work of great literature draws so heavily on mature understanding that there’s not a lot of point in reading it at age 5.
As a side note, I have more or less never seen 5-year-olds at symphony concerts in this area. From observing the local kindergartners a time or two when parents were asked to help out at the school or on field trips, it seems to me that it would be a mistake to take most of them–even the very bright ones–to a long performance.
In the city we lived in back when my oldest was 2 or 3 years of age, we had a season subscription to the symphony in the “cheap seats”, choral seats behind the timpanist. My husband date was usually our toddler. They both loved it and enjoyed it (and child was not a musical prodigy or a prodigy of any kind. 
). This child continues to love all forms of music including classical.
“I agree that there are elements of music that are likely to escape a 5- or 6-year-old, even if the child is technically proficient at a piece. Is the objection about the child’s understanding focused on elements that come from music theory, or is it based on emotional reactions or life experiences?” My objection to it (besides the fact that despite all the claims “it is the child doing it”, it is about the parents and their expectations/ego) is that with child prodigies (and the word has been used far too often, a kid who plays well is not a prodigy, a kid who can play something like the Mendelsohn violin concerto at age 7 extremely well could be) is that with prodigies, because the teacher and the parents see the kid can move along fast because they are playing instinctively, so they push the kid, but the kid is not learning to play it in a methodical way, the mechanics of playing the violin, for example, are both subtle and complex. The kids are going on instinct, and one of the things that happens to kids like this is when they get to past the age of about 13, 14, they lose that, then they are lost.
Janos Starker, the cellist, was a prodigy like that, and he saw Yehudi Menuhin after WWII playing and was shocked by how badly he was playing, and he realized it could hit him, he retaught himself to play cello in a structured way (and turned it into a method book still used). And yes, some of it is experience, when I see some little girl playing something about a gypsy woman who is supposedly a seductress and such, they are playing it the way they are taught and don’t know what they are expressing, a mature violinist understands that and it makes it a lot more deep.
There is an analogy here with reading books. If a young violinist attempted a major concerto and was playing it like a talented kid but with warts and in a way an adult wouldn’t do, I would recognize it as a kid stretching himself, if he played it like he was an adult soloist, I would suspect he was taught to mimic an adult player. If a 5 year old reads a book and describes to me their understanding and it is missing things, doesn’t have deep analysis, I would think that was a bright kid interested in reading. On the other hand, if a 5 year old supposedly read something deep, and started coming out with this analysis that sounds like a literature professor, I would suspect they had been spoon fed that by an adult trying to show how brilliant the kid was shrug.
Mozart was musically talented and was pushed by his father, he played at a high level both on the violin and piano. However, with Mozart, people talk about him composing at a young age, but musicologists will tell you that his early pieces were all derivative of other composers, that he didn’t start producing anything of interest until he hit his later teens.
As far as where the line is, that is up to the parents involved. I would draw the line at explicit sex (50 shades of gray being a perfect example, plus it deals with themes of abused children, sado-masochism and the like), whereas a book where the sex is alluded to but not explicitly mentioned (like Shakespeare and the good ole term “Slaked” used in a sexual context) I would likely be okay about it. There is no right or wrong, and every kid is different,a friend of mine’s son has been reading the books Game of Thrones is based on, he started at 11, and while I would have concerns because of the graphic nature of the books, his son seems to be handling it fine shrug.
Maybe my position on all sorts of different directions this conversation has gone in (literature, music, parental pressure, social adjustment, and more) is simply that children are actually in general a lot more resilient than we adults often like to give them credit for.
I told my mom “Catch-22” was a war novel.
@dfbdfb:
Yep, Children are a lot more resilient than we think. Obviously, that doesn’t mean “let the kid do what he wants” or nothing will hurt them, in the end children are not little adults, and they can in fact be hurt, but I think that people often think kids are made out of spun glass and any little thing we allow them to do may traumatize them for life, and it doesn’t. Conventional wisdom is to err on the side of caution, and I agree with that, but you can also hurt a child by protecting them too much, or assuming even that what scared us/scares us is the same with them.
@ QuantMech , I read YOUR post saying it wasn’t “sensible” to let a child read “Little Women” as judgmental. It seemed as if you were criticizing the parents of the little girl who read that book in kindergarten.That’s why I reacted as I did.I was on the receiving end of that sort of criticism many, many times. (IMO, it often boiled down to "I think my child is a genius. My child would not understand that book. QED yours can’t.)
I did censor what my offspring read, but if a 5 year old can read “Little Women” and does so for pleasure, I would allow it.
Different families have different values. For example, @ mathmom said she didn’t know what had happened to Beth in “Little Women.” I bet that mathmom didn’t regularly attend a Christian church, Sunday school, or Christian parochial school as a child. I had no personal experience of death when I first read “Little Women.” I was also 8. I knew exactly what the passage quoted in post #`167 meant because it was consistent with the way I had been taught about death for good people. We still use the phrase “RIP” for “rest in peace” when someone dies. That’s the concept being conveyed in the quoted language and the idea of Beth being at peace after death was wholly familiar to me. It was almost certainly familiar to most of the American girls who read Alcott’s book when it was first published. However, the language about the sunshine being like a “benediction” stumped me because, as a Catholic kid, “benediction” had an entirely different meaning for me. My point is simply that even little kids bring their life experiences to their reading. And, some kids are simply more sensitive, anxious, or fearful than others.
I was much less “liberal” in terms of the movies and TV shows my offspring could watch. If something in a book is beyond a child’s capacity to understand, the odds are high it will sail over his/her head or (s)he will come to a parent and ask “What does this mean?” When a child watches the same act it is less likely to sail over his/her head. I also think the child is more likely to stop “in his/her tracks” to figure out what (s)he just saw, while the child reading the book will continue reading it, content with getting the “gist” of the story.
@musicprnt says
Maybe Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa or some other family member is a literature professor/English teacher and enjoyed sharing the book and explaining it to the child. I remember my kid’s 7th grade teacher being astonished by my kid’s understanding of Shakespeare. Well, if you had “Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare” as bedtime reading by the age of 3 and had already seen a fair amount of Shakespeare performed, you understood a lot more than the kid who had never had that experience. My offspring didn’t have that experience because my ex-H and I were trying to impress anyone. It was because we liked Shakespeare.
My (NYC) neighborhood has free classical music concerts in what passes for a community center several times a year. MANY parents who love classical music bring infants, toddlers, pre-school and elementary school age kids to them. If the kids make noise, the parent usually removes them quickly. Some kids just fall asleep. But having attended some of these concerts over many years, I can tell you that there are always a few kids who sit there and listen quietly with an absolutely mesmerized look on their faces for 2+ hours. One who did that 30 years ago at every free concert she attended is now a professional opera singer.
But for far more of the kids, it’s a gradual process. They’ll sit and listen well for 15 minutes; then for 20; then 40, until they are staying and behaving for 2 hours. And that is why their parents bring them. Classical music is part of their parents’ lives. They play it at home, but they want their kids to experience a live performance.
I agree with @ dfbdfb that children are resilient, but I also think they understand a lot more than we credit them with and that there are things you can learn better later on if you are exposed to them at a young age. Certainly, if you don’t start talking to a child until they are a year old, it’s unlikely (s)he will have as large a vocabulary as the child who is spoken to and read to beginning at birth. You may be able to learn a foreign language with more vocabulary when you are in high school than when you are two, but exposing a young child to a foreign language has all sorts of advantages.
So, I believe that exposing a young child to classical music, including playing an instrument, or reading literature (s)he might not fully understand, also benefits a child. Delaying exposure to a later date when a child can develop better technique in playing an instrument or can fully comprehend the themes of a book doesn’t seem “sensible” to me.
TBH, I don’t like classical music much. My married kid’s spouse and spouse’s family really do. Everyone plays an instrument. Grandchild was in “music lessons” for toddlers by about 6 months. I know my grandchild will be taking violin lessons by the age of 2.5 because this is something a parent loves and wants to share.
@jonri, correct! My parents took us to church on Christmas and Easter at best. I did go to a Sunday school for a while when I was seven, not sure why. All I remember from it was coloring pictures of Bible scenes and singing “I stand on the Bible, the B I B L E !”
Another funny story about mis-reading things. My kids read the original British versions of the Harry Potter books and the younger one was very disappointed to discover that torches were flashlights.
My kids had no problems with Shakespeare in the park in elementary school. I don’t think they would have enjoyed reading the plays as much. (They both did read and act in a somewhat simplified version of The Tempest in fifth grade as part of their gifted program.)
It wasn’t Shakespeare’s actual plays, but “Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_Shakespeare that we used to read. It’s a lot easier to follow a Shakespearean play if you already know the gist of the plot and have learned some of the words!