Rob Houghton wrote:All of us, even as adults, only like what we know. That's an obvious statement - but i mean until we are exposed to new things we can only appreciate what we already know. Its a pity children aren't helped into a wider appreciation of art and music and film these days. the reason I like old movies and Enid Blyton and artistic illustrations and old music - in fact anything from Gilbert ad Sullivan to 1930's band music to 1950's, 60's, 70's, 80's etc is that I was exposed to a wide range of influences growing up. It seems these days that children experience only a very narrow sample of what is out there, and they rarely expand beyond those experiences all their life!
Hi Carlotta and Rob,
Carlotta, I very much enjoyed reading your post.
If I may be nosy and ask: where have you been? I didn't read anything posted on EBS by you for quite a while.
Regarding "All of us only like what we know": my parents tried VERY VERY hard in vain to get me interested in reading classics like "The Little Prince" or "Nils Holgersson". I read them, but didn't like them, because they were not as suspenseful as EB or Norman Dale or Astrid Lindgren's "Bill Bergson" or "Seacrow Island".
So already as a 10 year old child I was picky. I read their classics to please them, but read much more of EB which annoyed them.
That's what I thought, too. Children are only exposed to what they watch on TV (which in the US is VERY limited: animation and science docus for kids, "Lassie" one episode per week on Saturdays), what their parents get them for birthday/Christmas and what their teachers tell them about at school. And that doesn't seem to be much.
And the children's book section at Barnes & Noble really doesn't offer much variety: Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, some classics like "Tom Sawyer" and "Robinson Crusoe", "Little House on the Prairie" and other stories for American girls about the West in the past, "Harry Potter", books on magic and lots of new books with cartoon-like covers, mostly spy stories or dramas in the family (probably for the many kids who experience their parents getting divorced).
My point is: there are almost no adventures!!!
No escapism reading.
I always thought that adventure stories are timeless and thus must appeal to children, but to me it seems these past two children's books decades have been turning their back on adventure stories for kids more and more (sorry if my grammar is not correct, my husband finally found a way to turn off the automated translating system on my computer and now I don't have to re-correct back so many words when I'm typing in German
).
I'm so glad not to be a child today...it would be soooo very boring.
And what happened to those inspirational teachers that we used to have?