My daughter is five, and all for knowing about what her parents are up to. Her father was reading The Lord of the Rings on holiday last week, and she wanted it read aloud to her. (She’d loved listening to The Hobbit and so this was duly done; she changed her mind in about a minute.) The day after, we were making a fuss about buying Harry Potter and the Cursed Child tickets, and she wanted to come along. She was told she couldn’t, as she hadn’t read the books. This seemed very unfair to her, so I began reading her Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, so she could see what she made of it. Again, she was off and away shortly after I began.
I recount these micro-anecdotes not to show the short attention span of my child, but because they came to mind when I read of a new initiative launching in the US: KinderGuides. Pitched as “a series of illustrated children’s books that introduce some of the most iconic works of classic literature to young readers”, the books covered in the launch series include On the Road and The Old Man and the Sea, with future titles to include The Alchemist and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
They’re targeted at ages six and up – the age when “kids that are learning to read already but are also still being read to at night”, the founders tell Publishers Weekly. They’re intended to be “design-focused books that guide early readers through classic works of literature and film”, they add, with each book featuring “a story summary, a section about the life of the author, key words, main characters, a quiz, analysis and takeaways from the story”.
“Half the time, parents are the ones reading the book,” said co-founder Fredrik Colting (intriguingly, the man who was sued by JD Salinger for writing an unauthorised “sequel” to The Catcher in the Rye). “We have to keep their interest up, too.”
As the parent of a three-year-old, as well as the aforementioned five-year-old, I commend this aim. I also love the designs, and of course classics have been abridged and rewritten for children for many years (although this is going a step further – trying to reach them even earlier, addressing the pre-readers, or those just getting to grips with literacy).
But I’m just not sure I can get on board with the need for reading books like On the Road to my kids. It’s not so much the elements of the story that might be judged inappropriate for an infant – I read tons of books when I was far too young for them, and I’m fully of the belief that children take from literature what they’re able to understand, and leave behindwhat they can’t. Furthermore, co-founder Melissa Medina tells PW, on the less child-friendly aspects of On the Road, that “we don’t need to mention every gory detail. You still get the spirit of the story, which is about a road trip and about adventure and being free”.
It’s more the fact that I think encountering a work such as On the Road or The Old Man and the Sea is best experienced on your own – and in the original. A sort of On first looking into Chapman’s Homer kind of experience. Watered down, in picture-book format, they’re going to have a different sort of impact.
And why rush, in any case? There’s so much fabulous children’s literature out there already; why not let kids enjoy it while they can, without hurrying on to the adventures of Sal and Dean? If it’s road trips across the US you’re after, try The Incredible Journey, or Children on the Oregon Trail, or Little House on the Prairie. If it’s adventures with big fish, how about Pinocchio?
As for us, we’ve abandoned Harry Potter for now and returned to the series of The Worst Witch, Ottoline and My Naughty Little Sister for bedtime reading. Tolkien, Rowling, Hemingway and Kerouac lie ahead, ripe for discovery. But not quite yet.
