My kid just turned 6 and is getting just mature enough for me to read him a chapter book without pictures on every page. I was worried that he wouldn’t settle for having no external visual stimuli. So I chose a few favorite books my husband and I kept from our childhoods, and he choose James and the Giant Peach. Having never read it myself, I found myself interested as well. We have only read the first few (short) chapters, but I find I really love reading out loud to him and look forward to it on most nights.
I was struck that the book opens with James’s parents dying. But even more interesting is the manner in which they apparently died: being eaten by a rhinocerous.
I wonder if the death of the parents is a literary/plot device, for that is how James come to live with his awful aunts, and what immediately endears him to the reader. But by having them die in such an unbelievable way, does it make it more “pretend,” like the rest of the story, and therefore less frightening to young readers/listeners?
It seems like children’s books written today are more reluctant to involve such elements in the plot. Maybe that’s OK in some ways. But maybe in other ways, it helps children deal with difficult subjects.
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