Me no yike ke-tin

[ailbhe]

Emer doesn't like skeletons. When I mention the museum at Oxford, she says this, often. Over and over, even.

And I just checked out Little House In The Big Woods which I have always loved madly and it's all dead meat and shooting animals for food. Which I approve of, and all, I'm just not sure how difficult it will be to manage this with Linnea. There's too much of it to skip, really, the first instance is on page 4, so I'd have to introduce the characters, skip a chunk of the book, and then move on, skipping bits here and there. Linnea's not much into skipping - she tends to know what page we're on.

I got the vegetarian bug early. Then replaced it with the bloodthirsty bit, then went vegetarian again, and now I'm a happy animals eater. Linnea periodically expresses concern about meat-eating animals, animals being made of meat, people being animals, people being made of meat, and people eating meat. So either I could use the books to work through this stuff or I could upset her madly.

Eep. Help.

Comments

[batswing.livejournal.com]

Is she old enough to understand that people back then HAD to eat meat and isn't it great we have more choice now, or it it a bit soon?

[bafleyanne.livejournal.com]

I would say you could use it as a teaching tool. I know Linnea is bright, so perhaps you could talk about how in the pioneer days there was a limited amount of food for people to eat because food wasn't imported from all over the world, and especially in the winter, people had to live on fresh game plus what they'd managed to store from their gardens, etc.

I really adore the Little House books. I'm hoping Jamie will enjoy reading them even though they're "girl" books. :)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

They are NOT "girl" books. Well, okay, they ARE "girl" books, but they're ALSO "boy" books, and "grownup" books, and "people who don't identify with any gender particularly" books.

There's nothing particularly "girly" about them. The main character is a girl, but that doesn't keep boys from reading it or identifying with her.

[bafleyanne.livejournal.com]

Well, I could argue that the older Laura books (I am particularly thinking of Happy Golden Years) are more "girly". But by and large you are right, of course.

For the record, I love "children's lit" books, and I reread them frequently. ;) Anne of Green Gables, Betsy-Tacy, Laura...I love them all.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a man, and as a former boy myself, I never had a problem reading about her falling in love and getting married.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I grew up with the books. The "meat" thing never bothered me, reading them. I knew that meat comes from animals, and was comfortable with that up until the summer where I killed chickens for meat at summer camp (it wouldn't have been such a problem if the fryers weren't such adorable, well-behaved chickens, and the layers were such utter BASTARDS of birds -- if we were killing and eating THEM, I would have been fine), and then became vegetarian for a couple years, and then came to terms with it.

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

Moine only eat sausages & fish fingers & not actual meat anyway as they don't like it :/ Kate went off sausages for a few months when she found out that they are made from pigs. Holly knows & doesn't seem bothered.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

I say don't elide parts -- read the book to her if you think she can handle it. Skip it if you don't. And if it upsets her, tell her you understand that it's upsetting, and that a lot of people have a hard time deciding what to do about whether or not to eat animals.

[ailbhe]

Whaddyaknow, it was totally my problem. She was interested - this is stuff she's been thinking about - but not upset.

I'm not a smooth enough ad-libber to skip bits anyway, she'd be bound to guess I was hiding something. This is much easier.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't skip bits. As a child with a very retentive memory, I'd have been deeply offended if I read a book that had been read to me and found that Bits Had Been Taken Out. However, because I had terrible nightmares, my dad tended to pre-screen most of my books, and not give them to me until I was older if he thought they were too scary. (Although this in no way stopped him reading me The Hobbit at a very young age. I read Lord of the Rings a little later, and had nightmares about Nazgul in the shadows for a while. And I'm a life-long arachnophobe who's had nightmares about them all her life, so the cunning plan was definitely not quite cunning enough.)

Anyway, I think that censorship is less wise than holding off reading the book for a bit.

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

I think working through it is good, but TBH I wouldn't do it with this book. As I may have mentioned once or twice :-) Colin is mad on the David Attenborough Life DVDs, and they are good for this, because they show how ecosystems fit together. Maybe try Trials of Life?

[ailbhe]

There was this Teletubbies episode! and the Teletubbies lay down on the hillside and their tummies did the lighty up thing! And one tummy showed a telly picture! Of children at a nursery! And the teacher said "Today we are going to find out where our food comes from," and they went to a SUPERMARKET!!ELEVENTY!

I am not joking. I saw this.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

*picks jaw off floor*

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the book, but does Linnea's concern appear to be over people killing and eating animals?

or is it a logical but flawed progression of (animals = meat) + (people eat animals) combined with (people = animals) and (people eat meat) to produce (people = meat) which leads to People eating People!

Which would be distressing, I can see. I can't tell from Ailbhe's initial post what the concern is...

[ailbhe]

She's worked out that people can but do not eat people, but that animals can and might eat people, already.

I think this is all stuff I find more distressing than she does. She has me to keep her safe, after all. I'm stuck with the real unexpurgated world.

[(Anonymous)]

There is a series of learning to read/abrdige versions of Little House books for the younger readers called 'My First Little House...' They don't really cover the hunting bits, but might get her interested in the series until you feel she is ready for the real books. Elizabeth

[merryhouse.livejournal.com]

Not much help here I'm afraid... Christopher has been reading the Eragon series (he's a bit older than Linnea!) and it wasn't till he was nearly at the end of book 2 that I discovered the *real* fatal flaw in them: he has started to question the morality of killing animals for our benefit.

Christopher Paolini presumably would not consider that a flaw.

I did point out that contrary to his assumption, many of the animals we eat *wouldn't* have been alive otherwise ;-)

A little while later he got quite upset when I squashed a - damn, thingy, not woodlouse the other one - an earwig, yes. Seem to have weathered that particular issue, helped by Rob pointing out the damage slugs and caterpillars can do to the vegetables! The larger meat idea hasn't been referred to recently... don't know whether it will surface again.