What age are you talking about? I read it for the first time when I was 13 or so. These library censorship laws do not differentiate between 6 and 13. They just make it so that everyone under 18 can’t access it.
I suppose I’m thinking of pre teens. It has explicit sex, as well as IIRC pretty strong description of how the main character is broken down by the torture. Even without the detail, the rawness of the theme’s presentation feels more than I’d want to give a 6 year old, even an 11 year old. Animal farm is much tamer, even if, properly interpreted, it’s just as brutal!
I don’t know where I’d draw the boundary, if I were deciding. For that matter I don’t think I agree with book censorship anyway: at 6 your parents should be protecting you more than the library rules. Maybe don’t have it on the shelf next to Famous Five though?
If there is a pre-teen able to read and understand Orwell’s language, and there are precious few of those, I think they could handle the sex and the torture. As the cartoon suggests, they’re seeing it on the internet regardless.
I disagree. The intelligence to understand the language is separate from the maturity to handle the content.
And yes they’re seeing things on the internet… and shouldn’t be. That’s a long-standing debate in society about how heavily to shield them from it. But do you think the fact an 8 year-old might see awful things on tiktok means there’s no value in telling them to wait a few years before reading a book like 1984?
What 8-year-old is reading any Orwell? You’re talking about something that is probably an issue for .00001% of people at that age. Like 3 or 4 prodigies. So why do these bans which, again, do not differentiate between 7 and 17, need to be in place?
Also, where are the parents of these 8-year-olds? Shouldn’t they be aware of what their child is getting from the library?
It sounds like we’re talking cross purposes now. I don’t know what children are reading Orwell. Not like in the comic, I imagine. For that matter, I hope most children are not, in fact, seeing videos of cats being killed.
Kids are seeing a hell of a lot more violent videos than they are reading Orwell. That was even true when I was a kid in the 80s. I saw every Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movie that came out while I was in elementary school.
What age are you talking about? I read it for the first time when I was 13 or so. These library censorship laws do not differentiate between 6 and 13. They just make it so that everyone under 18 can’t access it.
I suppose I’m thinking of pre teens. It has explicit sex, as well as IIRC pretty strong description of how the main character is broken down by the torture. Even without the detail, the rawness of the theme’s presentation feels more than I’d want to give a 6 year old, even an 11 year old. Animal farm is much tamer, even if, properly interpreted, it’s just as brutal!
I don’t know where I’d draw the boundary, if I were deciding. For that matter I don’t think I agree with book censorship anyway: at 6 your parents should be protecting you more than the library rules. Maybe don’t have it on the shelf next to Famous Five though?
If there is a pre-teen able to read and understand Orwell’s language, and there are precious few of those, I think they could handle the sex and the torture. As the cartoon suggests, they’re seeing it on the internet regardless.
I disagree. The intelligence to understand the language is separate from the maturity to handle the content.
And yes they’re seeing things on the internet… and shouldn’t be. That’s a long-standing debate in society about how heavily to shield them from it. But do you think the fact an 8 year-old might see awful things on tiktok means there’s no value in telling them to wait a few years before reading a book like 1984?
What 8-year-old is reading any Orwell? You’re talking about something that is probably an issue for .00001% of people at that age. Like 3 or 4 prodigies. So why do these bans which, again, do not differentiate between 7 and 17, need to be in place?
Also, where are the parents of these 8-year-olds? Shouldn’t they be aware of what their child is getting from the library?
It sounds like we’re talking cross purposes now. I don’t know what children are reading Orwell. Not like in the comic, I imagine. For that matter, I hope most children are not, in fact, seeing videos of cats being killed.
Kids are seeing a hell of a lot more violent videos than they are reading Orwell. That was even true when I was a kid in the 80s. I saw every Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movie that came out while I was in elementary school.
Amazingly, it didn’t leave me horribly scarred.