| Fifteen men on the dead man's chest - and other treats |
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Some books churned out for young people these days can simply leave a parent bewildered. Some of them certainly surprise me - and not a lot of what passes in the region of commercialism does that so much any more.  I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow - a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest - Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
There seems be a concerted effort to deprive the young of a childhood. Of course, sex is enormously important to a child, but it is not the be all and end all it is to become after puberty, poor mites.
To find it necessary to introduce these things into what's called juvenile literature reflects a lack of imagination. A friend's daughter, aged 13, asked me to edit her review of a Stephenie Meyer story for her homework. The girl got around the sex parts remarkably maturely, but a parent who cares about words, and about his child, is left wondering what strange notion took a hold of the writer. She and all writers of children's stories would do well to refresh their planning with a look at the great stories in this collection. Treasure Island, for example, is gripping even for an adult. No need for sex to add excitement. No need for that wonderful character Long John Silver to have earned the name through an too much attention to a part of his anatomy. For a spot of innocent romance, do read some of A Child's Garden of Verses Take these two ... Happy Thought
The world is so full of a number of things, And The Wind
I saw you toss the kites on high Great stories here, so many titles we know so well in children's literature, brilliant literature. Try A Christmas Carol or The Wizard of Oz, or the magical, very clever Alice in Wonderland. Do grab a sackful of the brilliance for yourself and for the young people in your life - all for free. They are in PDF format which works well on computers. But if you want to convert them for your reader or iPad, you can change them easily with Calibre. Calibre, like the books, is open source which means it's free. And it is dead easy to use. Children's classic in PDF format: |
