Posted by Jon on March 23, 1999 at 16:24:27:
In Reply to: Re: THE ANSWER IS... posted by Anne LeVeque on March 22, 1999 at 18:00:51:
Sorry, I asked "How many . . .", not "What kind of . . ."; as a child who had the free run of the local library while growing up (even allowed into the locked stacks of "not in general circulation", where the Arthur Ransomes were kept [general disinterest, not content]) I can appreciate the difference. I think that the mean, or target, age of the readership is how a book is classified.
I don't happen to agree with those parents, or governmental entities, who want to protect all children from what they disapprove of their own children reading. I suspect that people who aren't mentally mature enough for a given book will avoid it; but isn't that part of their overall maturity?
Having said that, I will confess that LOTF never sounded very interesting to me, and wasn't one of the required books for the classes I happened to be in (it was for other classes in the same school - different teachers though), so I never bothered to read it.