Adults who read children's books

[dafydd manton]

Have any of the parents on here tried to read Winnie The Pooh to their kids? The children don't find it in the least bit funny, but it's a brilliant read, and incredibly funny. The last time I tried reading it to children, the adults were all rolling around helplessly, whilst the younger element, po-faced, wanted to know what was so funny. The way Milne uses word pictures is superb, but I wouldn't want to disregard it because it's ostensibly for children. I've read all the Christopher Robin series again fairly recently, and they're as fresh as the day they were written. The only difference is that now I can get some way to understanding what's in there. That goes, I think, for anything that is well written, no matter who it was aimed at.

[Snowqueen]

I always enjoyed children’s literature and have read variety of children books from different cultures. My grandfather used to buy stories for my aunts and uncles and when they grew up they passed them to us. I still own many children books bought by my grandfather. They are old but in good shape. Some of these are now favourite bed time stories of my nieces.
Here are few names of the books on my shelf. Aesop Fables, Hans Christian Anderson's Tales, Heidi, Danny the Champion of the World, Alif Laila( A Thousand Nights),few Russian and Japanese Folktales and ever green Tot Batot (Urdu) poems.

[Silas Thorne]

I started to read the Brothers Grimm (in English- Jack Zipes translation) aloud in the evenings.

[sadhana]

I still read Enid Blyton

[Darcy88]

I like the art-work. Many of the illustrators of children's books are artistic geniuses.

[halfmoon25]

Does it really matter? If a person enjoys a certain type of book, more power to them. Reading for enjoyment is something that is not done enough in our world, and I'm sure books like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games have sparked that enjoyment with many adults who haven't read books in years. To me, that is a good thing.

For the record, I have been known to pick up a YA novel from time to time. Are they easier reads? Yes. Do I still enjoy them? Yes.

[Mona_Marlow]

While I may come off as snobby when I say that adults readin HP, Twillight, etc... is laughable and ridiculous - I must say it. My reasoning? Those books are mass-market mulch written by teams of Hollywood writers to get hormonal teenagers to spend money. They were not written to inform, educate or make the reader think. They are certainly not the literary gems of old such as Tom Sawyer and Animal Farm.

[halfmoon25]

They were not written to inform, educate or make the reader think.

I would have to disagree. While I would agree that they are not literary 'gems', you can take a lot away from some (not all) of these books. Your telling me that a grade school/jr. high student can't be educated about racism by reading Harry Potter?

And what is wrong with just reading for enjoyment?

[Varenne Rodin]

I started to read the Brothers Grimm (in English- Jack Zipes translation) aloud in the evenings.

I read that aloud too! I had no idea their stories were so shocking and perverse. Very entertaining.

[Sophia21]

I love reading children's literature. It would make a very long list if I start naming the children's books I have in my collection. My uncle gifted me a collection of Hans Christain Anderson tales on my 10th birthday which I still have and love to read. My dad used to bring me a monthly children magazine and I made it keep on coming till I became 18 and even now often read them at leisure.

[cyberbob]

While I may come off as snobby when I say that adults readin HP, Twillight, etc... is laughable and ridiculous - I must say it. My reasoning? Those books are mass-market mulch written by teams of Hollywood writers to get hormonal teenagers to spend money. They were not written to inform, educate or make the reader think. They are certainly not the literary gems of old such as Tom Sawyer and Animal Farm.

I'm pretty sure Harry Potter was written by JK Rowling and Twilight was written by Stephanie Meyer.

Maybe they were written to make money. They were certainly written to entertain. So what?

Do you really think that if kids weren't "wasting" their time reading this stuff they'd be reading "good" fiction like Tom Sawyer and Animal Farm?

I'm a pretty big movie buff. Lately, eveyone's been watching The Avengers and it's broken all kinds of box office records. I went to watch it at the midnight showing when it came out. I thought it was mediocre. Typical Hollywood cotton candy fluff.

As underwhelming as the movie was, I'm not scandalized by the fact that it made a billion dollars while a movie that I love like The Big Lebowski barely made back its budget.

To make sense of things you have to play the numbers game. The amount of people with uncultivated taste at any one thing far outweigh the number of people with very developed taste.

Have you ever been to a rock concert? A sporting event? Well, somewhere out there are geeks who would probably laugh at your knowledge or appreciation for rock music/sports. These are just random examples, obviously.

The fact is that there aren't a billion dollars worth of movie buffs out there. All of this money is coming from people who ordinarily might not go to the movies on the weekend. Doctors, lawyers, soccer moms, etc. people who have chosen to spend their mental resources on something other than film appreciation. The only reason they're going now is because The Avengers is a spectacle, an escape from the mental exhaustion that their ordinary lives bring. Afterwards, they'll resume their regular lives and probably won't return to the movies until some other movie that their kids want to see comes along.

My point with all this is that the people who are reading HP and Twilight might not necessarily care that they're reading fluff. This fluff is not what's keeping them from reading Twain or Shakespeare or whoever would supposedly challenge their minds. Maybe they don't want their minds challenged. Or maybe they want to challenge them in other ways. What's keeping them from reading that stuff is that they simply don't want to. HP/Twilight is a temporary escape, not a way of life like literature is for some people.

Being snobbish isn't even necessarily wrong, I think it's natural. I roll my eyes when I see people reading Stephen King, and I like Stephen King! When you're passionate about something you're going to be a snob about it to some degree, but you should also have some perspective.

Not everyone who reads is a habitual reader, or has any desire to develop their literary taste. Not every kid who reads Twilight was ever necessarily going to read anything better, so it's not actually a travesty.

[muhsin]

Sometimes one drives fun outta reading them. I, for example, do, though not so often.

[Aylinn]

I have nothing against children books, some of them can be really imaginative. My favourite author of children's books, Michael Ende, who is best known for his epic fantasy work The Neverending Story, wrote many interesting books that show he had a vivid imagination.

As for Harry Potter, I don't think it is a bad book. It's certainly not the best one, but it's not the worst either. It makes children read and some of those children will try to read different books. I have recently spoken to a librarian and he told me that there is a lot of children who still read Harry Potter, so the library in which he works plans to buy a new set of Harry Potter books, because the old ones have been borrowed so often that they are in a bad shape. Apparently there is something magnetic in Harry Potter that attracts children and adults, even though there are no more volumes or films to look forward to, by comparison, Twilight's popularity is dying down.

I agree with cyberbob's post. Not every person who reads Harry Potter would spend time reading something more challenging instead.

[TurquoiseSunset]

I'm pretty sure Harry Potter was written by JK Rowling and Twilight was written by Stephanie Meyer.

Maybe they were written to make money. They were certainly written to entertain. So what?

Do you really think that if kids weren't "wasting" their time reading this stuff they'd be reading "good" fiction like Tom Sawyer and Animal Farm?

I'm a pretty big movie buff. Lately, eveyone's been watching The Avengers and it's broken all kinds of box office records. I went to watch it at the midnight showing when it came out. I thought it was mediocre. Typical Hollywood cotton candy fluff.

As underwhelming as the movie was, I'm not scandalized by the fact that it made a billion dollars while a movie that I love like The Big Lebowski barely made back its budget.

To make sense of things you have to play the numbers game. The amount of people with uncultivated taste at any one thing far outweigh the number of people with very developed taste.

Have you ever been to a rock concert? A sporting event? Well, somewhere out there are geeks who would probably laugh at your knowledge or appreciation for rock music/sports. These are just random examples, obviously.

The fact is that there aren't a billion dollars worth of movie buffs out there. All of this money is coming from people who ordinarily might not go to the movies on the weekend. Doctors, lawyers, soccer moms, etc. people who have chosen to spend their mental resources on something other than film appreciation. The only reason they're going now is because The Avengers is a spectacle, an escape from the mental exhaustion that their ordinary lives bring. Afterwards, they'll resume their regular lives and probably won't return to the movies until some other movie that their kids want to see comes along.

My point with all this is that the people who are reading HP and Twilight might not necessarily care that they're reading fluff. This fluff is not what's keeping them from reading Twain or Shakespeare or whoever would supposedly challenge their minds. Maybe they don't want their minds challenged. Or maybe they want to challenge them in other ways. What's keeping them from reading that stuff is that they simply don't want to. HP/Twilight is a temporary escape, not a way of life like literature is for some people.

Being snobbish isn't even necessarily wrong, I think it's natural. I roll my eyes when I see people reading Stephen King, and I like Stephen King! When you're passionate about something you're going to be a snob about it to some degree, but you should also have some perspective.

Not everyone who reads is a habitual reader, or has any desire to develop their literary taste. Not every kid who reads Twilight was ever necessarily going to read anything better, so it's not actually a travesty.

Amen.

[ennison]

There are many books written by those considered children's authors that are very good and would entertain an adult. There are books I read as a child that I would recommend to a child but from which I would now get very little. There are books I have read to/ with children which I have enjoyed myself as we read them. There are some books I have ditched as infantile even if nominally they were aimed at adults. There tends to be progression in children's reading from simple to complex. The complexity can be in language but is often in character or in theme. When I was ten I had read Huck Finn and Robinson Crusoe several times each. Either of these can be read at another level by an adult. Some writers for children have a brilliance of imagination that some writers for adults can only envy. Brian Jaques was one such writer. There are a very large number of writers who adults can read and enjoy even if nominally they are aiming their work at children. I would only find an adult reading children's literature a bit sad if that was all he or she read.