It sounds kind of ridiculous but this is actually pretty smart. I’d prefer to know what my kids are diving into and maybe set up guardrails or at least warnings if something they were interested in was funky.
My father the tween literary critic
Submitted 2 months ago by GreenDust@lemmings.world to [deleted]
https://lemmings.world/pictrs/image/463ccd56-ccba-4824-94dc-13ddea2feb2c.jpeg
Comments
justdaveisfine@piefed.social 2 months ago
mrmacduggan@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Plus you can have a book club and talk to your kids about something they’re excited about!
Dojan@pawb.social 2 months ago
I love this.
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
I mean if they’re reading books in the first place you’re probably already in the clear
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
What would be a “funky” book for you?
Too hard to grasp, like an advanced book for a 11 yo I understand, but I wonder what other people would forbid and why.
TheDoozer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A book that I got as part of a birthday present when I was in middle school had a passage where a man’s long-lost sister (who was part monster, but was painstakingly described as very attractive) told him that either he had to impregnate her the old-fashioned way, or she would simply get a syringe, extract sperm from his testicles, and impregnate herself that way to create, if I remember correctly, a monster that would end the world or something. It was labeled as “Young Adult” level.
So, like, probably something like that.
Admax@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Good old “don’t judge a book by its cover”
Some books have names that don’t evocate much, a tame cover and end up being smut books. Quick search brings up “Normal people”. Unassuming title and cover, you might guess romance, but quoting an article mentioning it “The sex scenes in this one really do jump off the page”.
You might not want your 10-13 y/o reading about that just yet…Some other might have toxic ideas, graphic depiction of violence, or lots of things you might want a teen to not read just yet.
justdaveisfine@piefed.social 2 months ago
I was specifically thinking of books with sexual violence, suicide, or promoting toxic behavior, and even then it does go down to the book’s context.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
These are the types who make websites where Christian parents can warn other Christian parents that a popular kids book has gay people in it, and it’s treated as normal.
Squirrelsdrivemenuts@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I remember reading a book when I was around 10 that was about an apocalypse and only two teenagers survived it. I think they were brother and sister but unsure. At some point they were discussing that they should have children and that they would also need to have children with their children to ensure survival of the human race. It was really weird and my parents wouldn’t have let me read it if they knew about that. They also had it moved from the kids section of the library.
vrek@programming.dev 2 months ago
I wish I had will smith’s speech on his target of choice when interviewing in MIB. It would of been the perfect response to “an advanced book for a 11 yo”
GreenShimada@lemmy.world 2 months ago
As a kid I read a book about a school with 30 rooms built sideways, so an oopsie tower, where each chapter is about a student or the teacher.
Sammy, the odd student from chapter 14, is a dead rat in many raincoats, and being a dead rat, Sammy is thrown in the trash.
Twilight is weirder than this?
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Hey, Sideways Stories From Wayside School is great! And weird, but good weird. Twilight was the first thing I thought of when the COVID toilet paper crisis hit.
GreenShimada@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s amazing, and Sammy’s story has stuck with me for decades for this very reason. I probably read the book a dozen times as a kid.
Star@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
I loved those books as a kid! Probably my introduction to surrealism
ElectricAirship@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Haruki Murakami would approve
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Different kind of weird. Sideways Stories are goofy kids stories.
Twilight is fanfic with ageless vampires that choose to creep on high schoolers, and werewolves that fall in love with newborn infants.
TheSeveralJourneysOfReemus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I have a non consensual relationship with twilight lore drops like this
GreenShimada@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Ah, ok, so it’s gross-weird?
Mesophar@pawb.social 2 months ago
What about a sentient bowl of petunias that is falling to its “death”, again, and is the reincarnation of a rabbit, whale, fly, and cow? Or an android monk believing everything was the same shade of pink, making it too early to move from the spot it was on for fear of falling off a cliff, so it sat on the back of the (manufactured, organic) horse it was riding?
Yes, there can be multiple books that are weird or have weird stories. It doesn’t have the be the weirdest one to still be weird.
toynbee@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Way to sideline things.
GreenShimada@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s a genuine question. I’m only familiar with Twilight as a few clips from the movies with RiffTrax comments over them. And I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer and read most of the Season 8 comic, so the “weird stuff + vampires” bar for me is already set high.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
I read a book with a school whose students were all boys whose name started with the letter A. It was literally a requirement.
I don’t remember much but I do seem to recall they had a field trip to a “hole factory” so they got to take various holes as souvenirs.
HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Same here. Olympians passed easily, Hunger game barely, and Twilight not at all.
J92@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I remember one holiday with my mum and dad in a cottage in the hills. They had a DVD player and dvds on the shelf in the little living room We put Gone Girl on because it was relatively recent and I’d heard of it, and about 10 minutes in my dad was like “oh wait, I’ve read this book…it’s shite.”
I insisted we watch the whole thing because I cant stand watching a bit of something I find I dont like, voice my opinion on it, and then get told that if I didn’t watch 'til the end, then how can I know?
Anyway, he was correct.
musubibreakfast@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Your dad? Ben Affleck. Your mom? Neil Patrick Harris.
Fontasia@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Reads Dune
“It’s just a soap opera”
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
YA fiction isn’t irredemable. My biggest problem with it is that they’re trying to write in danger, but there are limits to what they can put in. So you often end up with this ‘implied danger’ that has plotholes a mile wide, while they try to make your fear for the character. There was this one book, somewhere in paritals, where the heroine was somehow stuck between two lab machines, and one of them wasn’t grounded correctly, so she kept getting intermittently shocked, and as she tried to escape, she would get shocked again. It felt like an entire chapter, but it was likely only a few paragraphs. amounted to, she’s stuck, she got a little shocked, she got out.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
As with literally everything else, there’s good YA and bad YA.
Check out Brandon Sanderson’s “Mistborn” or “Skyward”. I’d say they’re both the “good YA” kind where danger is real (as much as any danger towards the protagonist before the very end of the book, obviously they won’t get killed off in the first chapter) and the story relatively original. The world-building is excellent, though.
zip@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
I’ll have to check those out. Thanks for the suggestion!
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
The Renesmee/Jacob bonding was certainly a choice.
Dojan@pawb.social 2 months ago
I only know this from clips of the film.
You named my daughter after the Loch Ness monster?!
AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 2 months ago
SSS+ Guardianship. SSS+ Vergil rank in Devil may cry
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 2 months ago
Lets all take a moment and realize this same author wrote about space jelly dragons with silver ribbon sentient parasites.
HikingVet@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Honestly that sounds better than teenage angst and sparkly vampires.
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 2 months ago
Its a love story about the alien parasite being enamored by humanity, joining their side, and falling in love all while inhabiting the body of an unwilling host whose mind refuses to fade like the rest. Not bad, but definitely still a tween romance novel.
tomkatt@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Pretty sure they’re referring to The Host and… yeah, it’s actually not bad.
PunnyName@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That sounds much better!
MadameBisaster@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
It is better
Goatboy@lemmy.today 2 months ago
If I didn’t know which author you were talking about id be sold on that description.
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Its a weird take. Appropriate books? Da fuck? That is already covered by the 18+ sticker on them?
python@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Might be a religion thing? The Twilight author is mormon iirc so she stays within the lines of what’s okay there. So the dad might have considered non-mormon behavior to be inappropriate, even if the book isn’t 18+?
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Different parents have different sensibilities i guess, and different books have different contexts. I’m not very well read in this field at all, but at the beginning of one of the Tiffany Aching series of Discworld books, a subseries wrote specifically for young adults, a 13 year old side character gets beaten by her drunken father into a miscarriage after he found out she had a boyfriend and the main character has to bury the remains and saves the father from hanging himself.
Most of the series are Harry Potter level magic and adventure, but that was pretty shocking and I’d be a bit wary letting my 12 year old read that.
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
subseries wrote specifically for young adults
but that was pretty shocking and I’d be a bit wary letting my 12 year old read that.
While I do think that letting children read dark books (as long the “darkness” isn’t because the author’s edgy) is not only ok, but necessary for them to be able to handle darker emotions, I want to mention that 12 is teen, or pre-teen, but definitely not a young adult.
TheSeveralJourneysOfReemus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Such a noble sacrifice won’t be forgotten
Etterra@discuss.online 2 months ago
Weird and bad.
damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I mean… I liked it. It was strange. But that was the point. Strange and somewhat fresh.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 2 months ago
If reading fucked up shit in a book fucks your kid up, there was already going to be something wrong with them.
PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
“I-I’m only reading the Twilight Saga to know if it’s appropriate for my daughter *sweats profusely* I-I don’t have a shrine to Edward in my closet!”
its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Dad was team Jacob all the way until the last book.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 2 months ago
All adults I know are Team “Get Fucking Therapy You’re Like 100 Years Older Than Her Or A Dog.”
GalacticSushi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Donald Trump was unironically obsessed with Edward Pattinson and Kristen Stewart’s relationships. Had multiple crashouts on Twitter about it.
ew.com/…/donald-trump-kristen-stewart-tweets/
5wim@infosec.pub 2 months ago
Lol Robert Pattinson, you mean
BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Considering he’s been heavily involved in the romantic relationships of many teenagers, it’s just par for the course for him.
fartographer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sounds like this sweaty man has a shrine of every Twilight character, other than Edward, in his closet.
AmadiohChess@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Luckily I had Amadioh Chess read me and recorded it into audobooks and that guy can make even the most boring paint drying activity sound entertaining with his wonderful voice