Re: Children's writers


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Posted by Ian E-N on April 01, 2006 at 19:58:18 from 86.130.101.126 user IanEN.

In Reply to: Re: Children's writers posted by Peter H on April 01, 2006 at 18:05:32:

I saw the programme, and that's not what she said.

Is this what she said ? :-

"It's adults reading Harry Potter books. No problem with children reading them. No problem with adults reading them to children. But adults, shamelessly and openly reading Harry Potter as if they were normal. What is wrong with them? What is wrong with them? I look at them on the train. They haven't even got the grace to disguise it with pornography or something.

The lack of ambition. You could do better than that, surely. I just feel like going with a big bag of books, Madame Bovary or something, and swopping them over and saying, 'Just try it. You're 37.'

It's doing them harm. It's doing society harm. It's doing the world harm. It's a tiny minority of people, who should not be allowed to vote. I feel that, because it's just wrong, isn't it?

I know what it's all part of. It's this culture of 'middle youth'. This idea that we don't grow old. No one is ever middle aged. We're all in our middle youth and suddenly we die and everyone is astonished that we were 93. They thought that we were 36.

And in a way it's a good thing. I can see a positive side to that 'cause in the past that was everyone's ambition: to be as old as possible as quickly as possible. When you look at photographs, like family photographs from the 1950s. In the entire family group, everyone looks old. You've got babies with pipes and trilbies and moustaches reading seed catalogues. But now we've gone too far the other way and now people think that their childhood lasts until they're 60.

I think that it's fair enough if it's people with reading difficulties, who are learning to read, but not all of them are John Prescott.

It's not that I think Harry Potter is a bad thing. It's a brilliant thing. It gets kids reading, but it's not for grown ups."


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