Is there a "right age" to read the Chronicles?

[wayfriend]

I came across this today. It's a story about book censorship. In it I found:

Back in Los Feliz, Garcia, the librarian, dressed in a 1950's faux-vintage print cotton dress, turns on classical music from the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra for some anti-censorship mood music, collage making and delicate explaining to the children-or in this case one child-a 5-year-old girl chaperoned by her mom.

"Why was this book banned?" the girl asked pointing to Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola.

"Witches," whispers Garcia. "It's about witches."

Witchcraft and wizardry are apparently lightning rods in book banning circles.

Since 1997 when Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone was published, some have regarded it as satanic prose featuring witchcraft, wizardry and magic.

But mostly the book banning controversy is about age inappropriateness.

"I was a precocious reader and regularly read novels for adults," Paolo Bacigalupi, the author of the award-winning young adult novel Ship Breaker, among others, told the New York Times in 2012. "When I was in sixth grade, I ran across Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson. Within the first 50 pages the ostensible hero rapes a young girl. I was horrified. I never finished the book, and I felt sick and uncomfortable for a long time after."

Some folks feel that kids don't pay attention to the "bad stuff."

"I often hear the argument that kids will gloss over reading content that they aren't yet ready to process," Bacigalupi told the Times. "In my own reading life, I haven't found that to be true. My reading skill led me into numerous stories that I was emotionally unprepared for and sometimes that was a traumatic experience." [link]

[Gaius Octavius]

The First Chronicles are perfect for mid-teens, the age at which we all experience profound self-loathing and become emos.

[Horrim Carabal]

I was 13 when I read LFB. That was a few years before I read LotR, maybe that's why I don't put Tolkien on the pedestal many fantasy fans do. The Chronicles are far superior in my opinion.

I was given LFB by my best friend, who was 14 at the time. So there were youngsters reading Covenant back then (this would have been sometime during 1986).

[darthbuzz]

There is a 'right' age to listen to the audio books though.
When you are old like me (51) and cannot be bothered anymore to get a dictionary out (use google) to look up words you don't understand every few pages.


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"Be true, unbeliever."