Re: fantasy without magic?


Brian M. Scott wrote:
> On 15 Aug 2005 23:37:57 -0700, Constantinople
> <constantinopoli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> <news:1124174277.117691.26870@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> in rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> > Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> >> On 15 Aug 2005 18:57:05 -0700, Constantinople
> >> <constantinopoli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> >> <news:1124157425.183517.311380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> in rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> >> [...]
>
> >>> My thought is that SF is not all that interesting to
> >>> younger readers, either.
>
> >> There was certainly a lot of it on the kids' shelves in the
> >> Amherst (Mass.) public library in the mid to late 50s. Just
> >> off the top of my head I remember juveniles by Alan E.
> >> Nourse, Murray Leinster, Asimov (Lucky Starr), Heinlein, and
> >> Andre Norton.
>
> >> Later on I was paying less attention, but Sylvia Louise
> >> Engdahl and H.M. Hoover come to mind, and I know that there
> >> were others.
>
> >> And I haven't even mentioned books for very young kids, like
> >> _Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars_, or <shudder> Tom Swift Jr.
>
> > I have been thinking about kids who are just ready for Charlotte's Web
> > but not ready yet for something more adult than Charlotte's Web.
>
> I simply don't remember ever being in that position.

Maybe you're talking about Charlotte's Web, per se. If you're really
disagreeing with my point you're arguing that children go from not
reading at all, to enjoying Agatha Christie, instantaneously. with
nothing coming in between those books with the thick cardboard pages
and Miss Marple.

> > The Phantom Tollbooth. The Little Prince. Alice in
> > Wonderland. So, at that level, assuming I haven't mixed
> > up fiction for very different age groups (it has been a
> > while), maybe 8 to 10 year olds (?) or whatever age group
> > is just right for Charlotte's Web,
>
> I don't know: it would never have appealed to me,

That's not really the point. Individual works may or may not appeal,
but minds do grow; they don't go from infancy to full adulthood without
a transition. There is a span of time between the five-page soft spongy
plastic books, and Don Quixote.

> and I seem
> to recall that most of my (younger) siblings had little use
> for it, either. Even though none of us came late to
> reading, by the time we could read, our tastes had mostly
> moved beyond such stuff. For instance, at that age I was
> reading Alice, which is adult reading,

But not just adult reading; it's special in having a broad appeal
across ages.

> and _Citizen of the
> Galaxy_.

I never really got into Heinlein. One of my earliest SF authors was
Stanislaw Lem; the first book by him was The Cyberiad.

.

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