regarding something on potteruses

[swordmage]

This was posted on pottersues as a comment to an entry.
"I do know one mother who doesn't make her son read because "If it's any good it will be made into a movie anyway."

In all seriousness, this makes me want to cry and it makes me want to scream."

Here is my reply.

I'm going to join in the crying and screaming here. That's just plain sad.

Harry Potter is not a bad book to introduce young(er) readers to. It can help to give them a more wide view of mythological creatures and lore. This is almost essential if you ever intend on delving into more sophisticated fantasy-genre books.

This isn't something like Faust, it's a very simple and straightforward book. There aren't any strange sub-plots, and the story is very simply written.

To say that there's no point in reading because "it will be made into a movie anyway" is insanely stupid. Was anyone following Foxtrot last week? It was a wonderful example of the idiocy of LoTR (and other) fangirls. (Speaking personally, I've seen the movies and read some of the books. Therefore, I tend to not comment much on fanfiction for LoTR, as I do not consider myself qualified enough to know what I'm talking about. Yet, I do know what they left out, and Eowyn/Faramir saddens me, as I did read the Halls of Healing and loved it,) When I was younger, my parents would buy me almost any book I wanted (they still do to some extent-request a history on Eclipse, the horse, the race, and the awards, and you get it).

I was reading Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses Of Enchantment the other day. Now, the book happens to be on fairy tales, but he makes some good points in regards to them. He says that the reading of fairy tales should be encouraged, as it helps to broaden their minds (so to speak). The same can be said for books, letting a child read when young can help them to see things they wouldn't before. (On a side note, this is why I'm generally anti-Disney, they have robbed the original tales of most of their meaning.)

I truely mourn for these children. So many books have been made into movies that don't truely do justice to them (leave LoTR out). We're not going to have them read Dracula or Frankenstein because there are movies of them. Seeing Aladdin leaves so much of the whole story out. True, The Thousand and One Nights is a long saga, but still nice to know the framework of it. And then you have more contemporary books, Jurassic Park, and The Lost World, as well as Timeline.

We have Troy coming out soon, what do you think the chances are that the Iiliad will be warped by this?

(I'm also posting this in my journal, in case the discussion decides to go there, as it's a bit OT for this journal.)

Comments

[fionawolf.livejournal.com]

Followed from PotterSues
My little sister is very dyslexic. She also has some other medical problems, so my parents had to homeschool her. Danielle learned how to read with major difficulty, from using Hooked-On-Phonics. She knew how to read, but hated it because it was frustrating for her. And then stepped in Harry Potter, with his magic wand and broomstick. Suddenly, Danielle WANTED to read. Every night. All the books. Soon she was reading them by herself with no one to help her. And when all of them were finished, she said "I want to read more." She read 'The Hobbit', and 'Bullfinch's Mythology'. She reads voraciously now, with comprehension and enjoyment, and on a level 4 grades above what she's supposed to. It's amazing. And none of it would have been accomplished without Harry Potter. My parents are eternally grateful to J.K. Rowling.

[swordmage.livejournal.com]

And thats why Potter is good.
You don't see little kids lining up around the block to buy the latest Terry Pratchett. Harry Potter opens a gateway to all other kinds of fiction. One day Harry Potter, the next Valdemar of Discworld.

[camwyn]

(On a side note, this is why I'm generally anti-Disney, they have robbed the original tales of most of their meaning.)

I feel much the same way, but I do have to point out two things about Disney and their treatment of two classic stories that aren't quite fairy tales per se: Bambi, and Pinocchio.

Bambi the movie bears so very little resemblance to Bambi the book that I nearly choked when I finally got around to reading the book. The movie comes off as a story about woodland animals and why hunting is Bad. The book? No. The book, while it carries much of that same theme, is more concerned with animals' interaction with human beings, and what the creatures of the woods (and, to a lesser degree, tame animals like dogs) think of the human race. Felix Salten's scene of forest creatures arguing with a hunter's hound over the death of a fox is both thought-provoking and disturbing, and Bambi's understanding of the place of humanity in the cycle of life goes significantly farther than the movie would have you believe. In all fairness to Uncle Walt, he did want to include the scene where Bambi ultimately encounters a human; however, his animators pointed out that the audience would never sit still for it. Nevertheless I would still like to strangle the company for what they did to that book.

Pinocchio, on the other hand, STANK. Stank to the absolute highest heaven. Horrible horrible horrible. I tried reading it on the assumption that Disney had mangled the story the way they'd mangled Bambi, and you know what? As far as I'm concerned, they IMPROVED on Collodi's story. The original book is a mass of heavy-handed didactic episodes about why children should Always Listen and Always Obey. Pinocchio was more annoyingly self-centred and illogical than anything out of the Coyote legends of the American Southwest, and everyone's actions and reactions were so exaggerated as to be utterly unbelievable. Any single episode might have been tolerated as a story on its own, but taken all together Collodi's book is... well, one of the books that gives Children's Literature a very bad name. As tales of immaturity and growing up go, it should not even be shelved in the same library as Peter Pan. Disney managed to make something bearable out of it, and for that I salute them.

Otherwise, though... well, otherwise it's amazing how much they've managed to mangle the other fairy tales they've touched. Though I do have to hand it to them- Maleficent rocked as an Unseelie sorceress.

[swordmage.livejournal.com]

Maleficent + Dragon = Happy times.
Rest of movie = disrespectful