I have seen enough gory movies to know that when I'm hiding behind the couch, someone is going to say "It's just a movie!?" Becoming desensitized to violence in movies is not the same thing as becoming desensitized to violence in real life. And as I said, I'm not simply looking at homicidal maniacs - think of all the gray area in between.


Unless you don't know how to find the silver lining. I'm not made to only see the bad side, but I have met people in my life who were very out of touch with what and how "normal" people think. And a few of them were young. If a kid sees few positive things in his /her life, reading a book that distills those dark thoughts and feeds it back to them w/o offering a bright ending is not going to help them. It's not to say every book does that, but I think you are over-simplifying the situation to suggest that they all have a positive moral or that children will automatically know how to manufacture one for themselves.


Again, that's oversimplification. I mean, seriously -- I accidentally bought a book that was basically erotica because it was on sale and the blurb sounded interesting. The back of the book does nothing but give you a few plot points and hooks. It doesn't say "Your child probably shouldn't read this because there is a graphic passage somewhere around page 118 concerning the exchange of bodily fluids." And what teenager who gets to that passage isn't going to read it, whether they it's the kind of book they like or not?