Recommendations of good non-animated "family" films for two parents and a 3-year-old?

H Schinske wrote:

I just came back from Harry Potter, and I didn't think the dementors were
*nearly* as bad as I had expected them to be. (Note: I am a certified wimp
about scary movies, and found the end of the first HP pretty frightful,
having totally forgotten some of the stuff from the book and therefore
having some horrid surprises. I also took a long while to get used to Nazgul
and orc scenes when watching the LOTR movies.)

I did put my hands over my eyes a few times, but more for the werewolf.

Nonterrifying dementors? How good of a movie can it be?

Seriously, though, thanks. It's good to know that they aren't *too* bad. My kid
is completely fearless, but I still feel a little protective (as one can
probably tell from my other recent posts!).

beeswing

My daughter badly wants to see the "Lord of the Rings" movies. I'd
really prefer she read the books, first, but even I can see that I might
be expecting a bit too much (even though I read them myself when I was
in the summer of third grade). I *have* told her, though, that she needs
to at least read "The Hobbit." My husband thinks I'm being a Mean Mommy,
and maybe I am, but reading the books was and is important to me.

Though I don't always insist that my kids read the books before seeing the
movie (e.g., they saw Mary Poppins before we read it; my 2nd child saw the
first Harry Potter but has not read it yet), I think the LOTR books are
important enough -- more so than HP or Mary Poppins etc. -- that it's worth
insisting on the books first.

I have
to admit that, in part, it's a stalling technique: The Kid may well be
fearless, but even I found the Nazguls in the movie a little
intimidating. The movies are awfully dark for a kid, but then again, so
were the books.

Maybe you guys could read them together, if she isn't ready or willing to
read them herself? I read each one to my son before each movie came out, and
the six reads/views were so much fun to share. If you took our approach, it
could be a year before she got to see the third, and most intense movie. (We
read other books in between; IOW, we read the first book, saw the movie.
Read some other books. Read the 2nd book, saw the movie. Etc.)

"Beth Gallagher" wrote in message
...

Maybe you guys could read them together, if she isn't ready or willing
to
read them herself? I read each one to my son before each movie came
out, and
the six reads/views were so much fun to share. If you took our
approach, it
could be a year before she got to see the third, and most intense
movie. (We
read other books in between; IOW, we read the first book, saw the
movie.
Read some other books. Read the 2nd book, saw the movie. Etc.)

I'd love to, but she's long past the age of being willing to be read to
or read books together. The last book I tried to read to her, in fact,
was The Hobbit, and that was quite a while back. She first claimed that
the troll scene scared her (this is the kid who is afraid of nothing)
and later commented that she found it boring (I don't know if she'd find
it less boring if she read it herself, but she's not willing to try).
The last is interesting simply because she's very much interested in
fantasy stories in general and will gladly read books that are in many
ways similar to The Hobbit. I've learned that any book I recommend is a
sure-fire "I won't read it," on principle. Or so it seems.

Part of it, I'm sure, is as simple as the fact that she's a very fast
and capable reader. Listening to a book being read slows here down too
much.

Thanks for the idea, though. I wish it would work for us!

beeswing

Kevin Karplus wrote:
I think, that if you read rec.arts.books.children, you'd find many
people who found it objectionable to water down books for children.
It is not an unusual opinion---definitely not idiosyncratic.

Definitely? That's exactly what "idiosyncratic" means. "A structural
or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group." And I
don't think finding some newsgroup posters who think the same way is
sufficient to make their opinion "not unusual".

Are these all people who would attack me for what I read to my kids? Or
just those who wouldn't do it themselves? Somehow the word
"objectionable" raises in my mind images of these guys picketing outside
my house.

-- David desJardins

In article ,
Beth Kevles wrote:

My feeling is that the reason a book is a classic has a lot to do with
the writing, and not just the story line. Yes, you can get something
out of an abridged version, but you lose a great deal as well. And many
kids will either *think* they already know the book, hence not read it
again when they're ready for the real thing, or else be turned off by
the abridged version when they would have loved the real thing when read
at the right time. So yes, there is a downside to seeing the movie
first, reading an abridged version, etc.


I agree with all these concerns. However, we have a number of
Illustrated Classics in our house, and I think there is a place for
them. For one thing, they seem almost unique in the book world in
terms of having multiple illustrations and large print in a book longer
than 80 pages. For young readers ready for longer and more interesting
stories, but still intimidated by unbroken pages of small text, they
fill an important niche. I do worry that my kids will not be
interested in the full versions, thinking they already know the story,
but I think the experience of re-reading the HP books and getting more
out of them each time has shown them that just getting a cursory
understanding of the plot is not all that a book has to offer. So
hopefully, they will eventually want to read full versions of the
stories they enjoyed in the Illustrated Classics format. My 10yo is
getting to that point now, where he wants to read the "real" versions
of some of these stories. And, when approaching reading a book with
challenging language in it, it probably helps many kids to have a
basic knowledge of the storyline in advance.

--Robyn

In article , Beth Gallagher wrote:
My daughter badly wants to see the "Lord of the Rings" movies. I'd
really prefer she read the books, first, but even I can see that I might
be expecting a bit too much (even though I read them myself when I was
in the summer of third grade). I *have* told her, though, that she needs
to at least read "The Hobbit." My husband thinks I'm being a Mean Mommy,
and maybe I am, but reading the books was and is important to me.

Though I don't always insist that my kids read the books before seeing the
movie (e.g., they saw Mary Poppins before we read it; my 2nd child saw the
first Harry Potter but has not read it yet), I think the LOTR books are
important enough -- more so than HP or Mary Poppins etc. -- that it's worth
insisting on the books first.


You *really* need to have read the books before seeing the LOTR movies,
IMO, to get anything more than a hack-and-slash out of them. So much
subtlety of the stories is lost in the movies. If you've read the books,
you naturally fill it in yourself. But if not, all that richness is lost.

--Robyn

In article , Beeswing wrote:
I'd love to, but she's long past the age of being willing to be read to
or read books together.

Mine (8yo and almost 11) are still willing to have me read to them if
it is something they would have trouble understanding on their own.
Right now we are reading a nice rendition of the Arabian Nights with
very old-fashioned language in it.

The Hobbit, IMO, isn't the best read-aloud. I'm not sure why, it just
doesn't seem well-suited. Perhaps because the action is already pretty
slow, amidst a lot of description, that to slow it down more by reading
aloud seems like too much. fwiw, my 10yo read it this year. I myself
didn't read it until a couple of years ago. When I picked it up at
about 13, I found it boring. I actually haven't finished the LOTR
trilogy; got distracted most of the way through the third book! I haven't
seen the 3rd movie either. My 10yo chose not to read the LOTR books after
finishing the Hobbit, though I expect he will within a few years. He
isn't particularly pushing to see the movies either, which I will be more
likely to allow after he has read the books, if he reads them.

Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)
--
"Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to
work hard at work worth doing." -- Theodore Roosevelt

wrote:

The Hobbit, IMO, isn't the best read-aloud. I'm not sure why, it just
doesn't seem well-suited. Perhaps because the action is already pretty
slow, amidst a lot of description, that to slow it down more by reading
aloud seems like too much.

I agree, and have posted about this before. I think Tolkien really could have
used a good edit job on _The Hobbit_ (and I *don't* mean that it needed
shortening -- it needed rearranging to help the problem with the pace and so
on). Too late now, I suppose. It's still a marvelous story anyway.

--Helen

Robyn Kozierok wrote in :

[snip]
The Hobbit, IMO, isn't the best read-aloud. I'm not sure why, it just
doesn't seem well-suited. Perhaps because the action is already pretty
slow, amidst a lot of description, that to slow it down more by reading
aloud seems like too much. fwiw, my 10yo read it this year. I myself
didn't read it until a couple of years ago. When I picked it up at
about 13, I found it boring. I actually haven't finished the LOTR
trilogy; got distracted most of the way through the third book! I haven't
seen the 3rd movie either. My 10yo chose not to read the LOTR books after
finishing the Hobbit, though I expect he will within a few years. He
isn't particularly pushing to see the movies either, which I will be more
likely to allow after he has read the books, if he reads them.

The story of the Hobbit is based on storied that Tolkein made up as bedtime
stories for his son, so it should be read-aloudable. OTOH, creating the
lands of Middle-Earth, where the stories were set, was something Tolkein
had bein doing for many years.

I read the Hobbit as a set-book at school, when I was 11, and I was
entranced by it. I subsequently twice read Lord of the Rings (as a
teenager, and in my early twenties) and couldn't see what people liked about
it. When I re-read it in preparation for seeing the films, I saw what a
subtle set of books they are.

FWIW, I've recently been reading about Viking and Icelandic literature,
which Tolkein also studied. It is really interesting to see some of his
sources: the Vikings thought of the world as Middle Earth. Some of the
names in the sagas have clearly inspired Tolkein (eg Gisli in the sagas,
Gimli in LoTR, and varients of Thorin). One of the books I've read was
published in 1912 originally, and it refers to the sagas as being about
breaking into burial mounds and fighting dragons.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

Hi -

I just finished reading The Hobbit to my 8-year old. He LOVED it. I
hadn't read it since I was about 11 myself, and it struck me as being
even better read aloud than it had been then. We'll start on LOTR soon,
I think.

--Beth Kevles

http://web.mit.edu/kevles/www/nomilk.html -- a page for the milk-allergic
Disclaimer: Nothing in this message should be construed as medical
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