[bluegoose]

Originally Posted by creekster

I gathered. My point is that I did listen to the first and second books (books on CD, as I mentioned in the thread) so I feel like I have a pretty good idea about the books.

I don't find the books threatening nor do I find them unacceptable. In fact, and this is sincere and not meant as a sarcastic comment at all, I think anyone's kids are much better off reading this sort of book and discussing it with a parent, as my 9 year old did, than they are watching the Disney channel for a couple of hours. Seriously, I am more disturbed at how twisted some of the Disney channel stuff is in terms of how a family works, what is acceptable behavior for children, especially as they interact with adults and authority figures, and the value they place on important aspects of growing up, such as education and maturity. Now I can certainly appreciate that you might have a different view, and for YOUR 9 year old His Dark Materials might not be appropriate. For mine, however, I think they work out fine and are a good jumping off point for a lot of discussions about alot of topics such as faith, death, the spirit, symbolism, etc. To each his own.

You bring up an interesting point here. A good friend of mine who was recently released as a bishop points out that getting the youth of the ward to read ANYTHING was half of the challenge of getting them to read their scriptures regularly. A lot of the kids that he counselled hated reading anything, let alone the scriptures. IMO, if your 9 year kid is reading anything, encourage it. Hopefully his developing love of reading will eventually transition into a love of reading gospel related stuff as well.