"Horror" for children? -- with reference to George MacDonald
Posted by:
Dale Nelson (IP Logged)
Date: 14 January, 2024 04:13PM
Here's a place to discuss the possibility of "horror" as something enjoyable and beneficial for young listeners and readers. By "young" I mean, for purposes of this discussion, age 12 or younger.
It is clear to me that it's wrong to try really to terrify or horrify children with visual or written materials. I believe one of M. R. James's stories deals with an old bachelor who enjoys hurting children emotionally and imaginatively with slides of horrible imaginary scenes.
Everyone will, I trust, agree about that.
Nor am I thinking of the genre of oral yarns -- campfire tales -- that kids often like to tell each other, or at least many of them did, I suppose, when I was a youngster 60 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if these have been driven out by much nastier stories derived, perhaps at second- or third-hand, from movies and TV. I used to be pretty good at this as a kid making up stories for my cousins, or so a perhaps self-flattering memory suggests.
Perhaps the best example of what I do mean is George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin. In this book, the little girl can hear the sound of goblins delving underground, and, at last, they burst into the castle where she lives. She has a guardian, her "Grandmother," and a loyal protector, a boy a little older than she who is familiar with the mines.
"Horror" might not be the best word for what I'm driving at, but "spooky" isn't the right word either because I'm not necessarily thinking about "spooks" -- ghosts.
I don't know if there's much to discuss on this, but here's a place, if so.