When I finished reading the sixth book, I turned to Julia, then about 12 years old or so, and said “Oh crap, now we have to wait for the next book to come out” and she said “Welcome to my entire life, Dad!”
Anyway, we all love the movies, and here’s the trailers for the next one:
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle
or Paperback
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or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
*sigh* November is still way too far away.
I read all the books to my daughter when she was 5-6, she’s now 7. I told her she can’t see the movies until she can read the books herself. (I’m hoping she’ll be at least 8 or 9 before she sees the first movie, that’ll keep the scarier ones farther out.)
It’s hard for me to see the movies without her, but I really, really want to see this one.
Lynn: I predict that something will click, and she’ll read all the books within a few weeks time some time sooner than you were expecting, and then you’ll be renting the DVD’s!
You are probably right. I think she’ll start reading them soon.
I just worry the movies might be too scary–the later ones anyway.
We just read Lord of the Rings, getting each movie after (I really wanted to see them). The first movie was OK, but the 2nd seemed to keep her up at night. If netflix ever gets us the third I’ll watch it first and then distract her from the scary bits. Shelob may be too much. She thought the orcs were scarier than she’d expected. But she loved the movies even so.
IMHO modern kids are much more tolerant of scary stuff than we were at their age. I suspect that it has to do with their arriving in a faster paced and much more explicit, if not existentially more scary, world.
It is entirely natural, pretty much expected, that fathers will underestimate, by about 25% of age, their ability to handle things. Many parents get shocked when they, choked up and nervous, undertake The Big Sex Talk and find out their kids know more than they do.
In a mall I overheard a mother trying to have a teachable moment about homosexuality with her daughter after she found out that one of her friend’s fathers was gay. The kid gave mommy a lessen in ‘I know he’s gay and that means he likes boys like you like boys’, ‘I know they do stuff with each other’, ‘No big deal’. The kicker was ‘He is nice and dresses better than daddy’.
If you think a movie might be too much rent it and watch it at home. Scenes that are overwhelming in a theater with a huge screen and surround sound are more manageable on a smaller screen in more familiar surroundings.
On the old familiar couch, with daddy, and the family pet, a kid can handle a lot.
These look to be awesome. Unfortunately, that goody-two shoes Harry wins instead of Voldemort. Ah, well…
Also, while I’m at it, have you seen Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality?- http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
It is a fanfic imagining what might happen if Harry had been a bit smarter and is adopted father had been a loving professor of chemistry at Oxford. So of course, young Harry learns all about the scientific method and then tries to apply that to magic. And much hilarity ensues. There are some mildly annoying parts (on occasion Harry is a bit too Mary Sueish) but it is overall very amusing.
Art: I really think it depends on the kid. I know there were a couple horror movie fans in my elementary school growing up, and kids talking about the “V” miniseries, along with the rated-R movies of my generation like Predator, Alien, Robocop and the Terminator.
I certainly wasn’t one of those kids. Ghostbusters was about the scariest movie I could stand watching. My parents took “PG” very seriously. I have a co-worker whose daughter gets overanxious even at Pixar movies with too much action. In the end, the ratings system has to be seen as a guide, rather than a babysitter.
My eight-year-old son and I spent our summer trying to see how many of the Harry Potter books we could get through before school started back up. We read them together, me reading one page then him reading the next. (We were able to get through the first four books and twelve chapters into book five.) After each book we’d pop in the movie and watch it together. We were hoping we could get through the rest of the books before the next movie comes out so we could take him to see it in the theater, but it’s looking like it’s not going to work out that way. Ah well, homework must come first 🙂
As to scary scenes in movies, we’ve always told our son that if he sees something that is scary to him to just close his eyes and we’ll tell him when the scary part is over. It works pretty well. While we’re mindful of which movies we’ll let him watch in the first place, he’s got a good eye for spotting what’s going to freak him out and preemptively shutting it out.
Sorry, but I really don’t get the “too scary” thing. I can certainly see it could make a film unenjoyable and even lead to disturbing nightmares and such. But I what I don’t see is how that is really a problem kids need to be protected from. On the contrary, it seems like a good thing for a kid to learn to deal with at pretty early age.
travc, even among adults, too much scary is bad for us, particularly when it’s scary we’re not in control of. Nobody’s suggesting shielding kids from all scary stuff, just not overwhelming them with it in a way that causes trauma.
Just avoid those movies where if you answer the phone or watch a video you are possessed by Linda Blair.
Harry potter is definitely not scary. Or, at least for me. I watched big mamas house 2 @ 4 years old!