For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on. Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable. However…
Small nitpick, cynical old Benjamin was a donkey not a goat.
“He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.”
For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on. Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable. However…
This is only true if the young ones in question are in a psychologically safe and emotionally supportive environment. I read things as a young child, without having the support to talk and parse them out, and additionally on top of the chaotic environment I was already in, where reading things like Animal Farm, or, specifically in my case, being introduced to the concept of destructive extinction events in books, mov…
I was 11 when I read All Quiet on the Western Front and maybe 13 when I read Innocent Erendira. I don’t remember talking to anyone about these, though I did feel terrible for a few days after. Honestly, no lasting effects.
This is probably the same as the fact that 70% of soldiers experiencing combat stress do not get PTSD and 30% experiencing severe combat stress don’t either. This means human variability is significant.
So it’s a question of whether you want to roll the dice. I think I’ll want to permit the autonomy for my children but it’s entirely possible they’ll be in the susceptible set and be damaged.
Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story. Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation. Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cau…
> "Requiem for a Dream" Well, if we're thinking about the moral messages of some of these old tales, I've always thought Requiem could be a good movie to show tweens+ as a cautionary against drug abuse. If Disney threw in an evil witch selling smack, a few catchy songs, a handful of dead parents, and a handsome prince to kiss Harry's arm back to life then I bet they'd have... well, maybe not a hit. But it would be so…
This description totally reminds me of Trainspotting!
Those two, along with Kids (1995) could definitely be used as cautionary tales for t(w)eenagers.
Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story. Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation. Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cau…
Children's songs are also often cruel. "Il etait un petit navire" tells the story of a young sailor about to be eaten because the ship ran out of food. "Sur le pont du Nord" tells the story of a brother and a sister who ran off to a ball without their parents' approval and die when the bridge collapses. "Il etait une bergere" tells the story of a young shepherd who kills her mischievous cat in anger. These are exampl…
Spaniard here. You could be scared if you paid attention to what little girls actually sang in those songs made to play with hands and such.
Killing depictions, mild sexual jokes... as nothing.
For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on. Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable. However…
To me Bambi’s mom being killed is much milder than the death of Mufasa in The Lion King. In The Lion King you see the violence first hand and then the betrayal of a family member leading to a child’s self inflicted exile.
I resonated with the fear and pain of those moments of not knowing after the shot and subsequent feeling of loss in Bambi much more acutely than the dramatized witnessing of the fall in TLK. The conflict between Scar and Mufasa had a song and jaunty lead up, so the betrayal wasn't much of a surprise. The death of Bambi's mother felt senseless and shocking. What gain could her death have served her killer? Why did she…
Exactly! Why did she die? So someone could have a moment of pleasure, someone who then never gave her another thought.
I’ve grown watching „The Animals of Farthing Wood” (1993 cartoon). It has episode showing family of mice struggling to survive and worried about future for their babies. In following episode we get shot of same mice family impaled on needles by birds going to eat them. https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c3201142/comment_EkpfJKfyX8WRKQnr7H... Entire story is told around forest dying out and animals struggling to survive in it.…
I've been split on this. On the one hand it is a bit unpleasant and can be traumatizing, and we tend to shy away from unpleasant things, but on the other hand lots of generations grew up on Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and learned a bit about how difficult life can be and the consequences of moral failings or lack of hard work. It is important to prepare children for the fact that life…
I don't mind scary stories for children, especially when told by people who know those kids and can easily judge the effect. But, the generations growing up on that and them taking deep moral lessons from it point is overstated.
They were collected or written and then popular collections of folklore in some part of last century. They are not exactly bible, many of those stories don't even have some kind of moral lesson in them.
It wasn't the first horror film my children saw (they watched Jaws, Alien, and Stranger Things) but the most terrifying and traumatic experience they've seen was the shipwreck scene in the Black Stallion. If you want to frighten children, murder what they love while they watch: their parents and animals. Coincidence both Bambi and the Black Stallion were written during or in the immediate aftermath of world wars?
> Coincidence both Bambi and the Black Stallion were written during or in the immediate aftermath of world wars? Meh. Every generation has its angsts, and writers putting it down to paper. Watership down was written in the very late 60s / very early 70s.
Bambi was a movie for war kids who lost a parent (or both) in the war.
For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on. Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable. However…
I read the Animal Farm to my below K12 kids on one sitting and they were hooked. Kids needs scary stories in a safe environment. This will help them process these thoughts and prepare them for the inevitable trauma they will face at some point in their life. Animal Farm is also not a bleak read but also fun as you can do all the animal voices with their characteristic animal sounds.
Stories don't prepare kids for trauma, and I don't think there's any real evidence in support of that idea. I would wager a large sum that a child who has heard scary stories is not more likely to better handle, say, the loss of an immediate family member, than a child who has only heard happy stories about unicorns, rainbows, and friendly interactions.