Reading Hurts
Oct. 27th, 2008 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseSo, my alter ego is over at Something Wicked this morning talking about how cool it is that reading made Mason cry. Poor Mason. He was almost inconsolable this morning when he discovered that Darth Vader LIED to Luke. Plus, I honestly think that the suddeness of his own emotional response to mere words on a page kind of shocked and scared him. This is the only "problem" with having a five year old that can read books written for teens. However, as I told him in the car on the way to school, the very best thing about books is something I learned from a book by Ray Bradbury called Fahrenheit 451, which is that, unlike TV and movies, you can put a book down. If it's scary, you can stop reading it for a while (or, for a year -- or, forever.) YOU are in control of a book in a way you aren't with a movie or TV. Yes, your emotional responses are manipulated in the same way, but if you need to stop and process something that just happened in a book, you can.
This is why books rule.
I told Mason that one of my favorite things about his mom is that when horror books scared her, she'd hide them in the freezer. Seriously. Of course, she'd always go back to them, but sometimes she just had to hide them for a while -- or at the very least, turn them face down (like a vampire in his grave, to keep the scary from surfacing.)
Reading is a powerful, emotional experience. It can make you scared. It can make you cry. It can also make you laugh out loud and feel like dancing with joy.
Joy!
This is why books rule.
I told Mason that one of my favorite things about his mom is that when horror books scared her, she'd hide them in the freezer. Seriously. Of course, she'd always go back to them, but sometimes she just had to hide them for a while -- or at the very least, turn them face down (like a vampire in his grave, to keep the scary from surfacing.)
Reading is a powerful, emotional experience. It can make you scared. It can make you cry. It can also make you laugh out loud and feel like dancing with joy.
Joy!
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Date: 2008-10-27 07:00 pm (UTC)I love it when reading gives me an emotional response. It means I have something invested in the characters and the story, which is one of the best parts of reading for me.
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Date: 2008-10-28 12:44 am (UTC)Mason is such a lucky young man. I just know he's going to be very aware of how amazing both his parents are, and be thrilled and grateful to have had you.
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Date: 2008-10-28 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-28 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-28 04:04 am (UTC)-Mel
The downside of reading so much, so early...
Date: 2008-10-28 02:35 pm (UTC)"Oh... To Kill a Mockingbird... great... I've already read that like four times when I was eight... hurray..."
Not that I didn't love the books, but still, suddenly you're looking down the barrel of a really slow month and a half of class ahead of you. ALSO, I had classes where they would assign some god awful terrible easy reader book and it was like: "Ah... we're seniors in high school, shouldn't we be reading GOOD books, instead of stuff I would have snubbed as a fourth grader?"
Not that he should stop reading, of course. You should get him the Taran Wanderer books (the Black Cauldron, the Book of Three) I loved those when I was his age. They were my first fantasy series and only sometimes scary.
Re: The downside of reading so much, so early...
Date: 2008-10-28 05:15 pm (UTC)Re: The downside of reading so much, so early...
Date: 2008-10-28 06:57 pm (UTC)Re: The downside of reading so much, so early...
Date: 2008-10-28 06:58 pm (UTC)