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Does letting kids read SF&F harm their mental health?
Submitted by Capt. Xerox on December 12, 2008 - 6:21pm.
Harry Potter is the most successful bit of YA fiction ever conceived, but there are many more genre titles out there that are geared toward a young audience. This interesting thread on a teaching forum lists many recommendations.
Don't let Richard Dawkins see the site. He's planning a book that examines how feeding kids a diet of fantasy novels isn't good for their mental health as it harms their ability to think scientifically.
I wonder what he'd think of Bruce Coville, another highly succesful children's writer who was not quite the equivalent of J.K. Rowling in his heyday, but still a hit with young SF fans.
Depending on the age of the child, I'd steer him or her to this trio of fantasy novels which are recommended on a bookstore blog as essential titles. I don't read much fantasy, but those three top my list.
And whatever you do, don't let Dawkins check out this trailer for We Are Wizards, a movie about Harry Potter fandom. He'd probably blow a gasket.
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Richard Dawkins' crusade
Dawkins risks becoming the dour boor of secular humanism. Some of his antics and hissy-fits are just embarrassing. It doesn't speak well for scientists who venture outside of their particular area of expertise to engage with experts and practitioners in other fields (which he doesn't seem to do very well). Does he plan to examine the broader pedogogical merits of fiction and mythopoetic literature for children - and if so, is he even qualified to do so?
What's that old adage about assuming the very worst characteristics of those you oppose? I call his brand of militant and prickley interventionist atheism "The New Fundamentalism", especially now that he seems poised to go after books - BOOKS - he disapproves of (lemme guess: Tolkien=bad, Pullman=good). I'll wait and see what he comes up with, but he's already shown a tendency to go over the top with this, in my opinion. There are far better spokespersons for the secular humanist cause among eminent scientists than Dawkins.
Sci-Fi Nerdlet
I always much preferred science fiction to fantasy. Back when I read the Narnia heptalogy, they numbered them in publication order. I liked them all, but I was delighted upon reaching the sixth book, "The Magician's Nephew." In that book, behind all the fantastic elements, Narnia kind of became science fiction—or at least closer to science fiction—with travel between worlds.
It seems to me now that with that book, set around 1900 as I recall, C.S. Lewis was emulating the style of the era's "scientific romances," and did a bang-up job.
I wonder if I'd been disappointed had they been numbered in chronological order, as they sometimes were later on, and thus went from pseudo-science fiction to straight fantasy.
science fiction recommendations
Dawkins is one of those concrete thinkers who missed the part in "History of Science" where they covered the scientific breakthoughs made by imaginative thinking and experimentation. He is also one of those who feels that because he doesn't like something, it should be forbidden to everyone.
Also, can we just stop labeling everything that makes people think differently from us as "abuse"? It's giving abuse a meaningless name.
As for your science fiction recommendations, I'd just like to utter one caveat. Kids today rarely respond to our classics--Heinlein, Asimov, Leiber, Moorcock, Howard, Clarke. The problem is a basic one: the tech is dated. We're better off introducing them to current writers and handing them the classics in college, when they're more interested in our roots and in the craft of the classics.
For contemporary classics that the teachers didn't have listed, I'll add:
Scott Westerfeld (the Uglies series, SO YESTERDAY); Suzanne Collins' THE HUNGER GAMES; Robin Wasserman's SKINNED; Neal Schusterman's UNWIND; Gemma Malley's DECLARATION; Cory Doctorow's LITTLE BROTHER; John Marsden's series beginning with TOMORROW, WHEN THE WORLD ENDED; Garth Nix's SHADE'S CHILDREN; Stephanie Tolan's WELCOME TO THE ARK and sequels; Annette Curtis Klause's ALIEN SECRETS; Margaret Bechard's SPACER AND RAT. After a long dry spot, middle school and teen science fiction is having a rebirth!
The opposite is true:
Speculative fiction books actually prepare a mind for science, provided they are written well. A property of science is that before learning how stuff works, one has to guess. This is what happens in speculative fiction; for some reason some problem arises and it is tackled with some speculation, like magic in fantasy or science in science fiction. Exactly like in real life. Only in real life, there are more presumptions and arbitrary taboos...
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