dragonlady7

So, I've discussed on here before, I think, how I've been reading The Books of the Raksura to my 4-year-old niece. It started because she was fascinated with my e-reader, and I didn't have anything specifically suitable on there to read to her, so I read a couple of the short stories from the Raksura collections, and when she was still interested, just decided to dive in and start reading The Cloud Roads until she got bored.
But she didn't.
Now, they're not kids' books; people die, there's violence. There's some sex, though Wells as a writer tends to fade-to-black or focus on the overall rather than choreography, if you know what I mean-- so the books are probably PG, except for the part where people die a fair amount and there's some pretty advanced emotional choreography going on. So, really, in effect, probably about a T rating, if I'm understanding those properly, with some trigger warnings for mentions of heavy topics like sexual assault and child abuse and such.
But I've read the books so often, I know them well, and I've figured out I can just summarize some things and slide over others. And as for the rest, well-- this is Farmkid, and she knows about death a bit (she lives on a farm with livestock, after all), and we have pauses for discussions sometimes. I tone down the gory details a little, sometimes. There isn't much I've needed to change.
I've had to explain the concept of an unreliable narrator. The series is told from Moon's close POV, and he's paranoid, among other things. So I've had little sidebars where I'm like, "Now, Farmkid, think about what the other people in this scene probably felt. Do you think they were as angry as Moon thought? I bet they were really scared instead, weren't they? That's probably why they seemed so mean. It's because he's scared too."
And that's gone over pretty well.

Anyway-- we've made it through two entire novels, together, over about a year. I think it's been really fantastic for her to have a large, immersive story that doesn't have pat morals; not everything works out the way you hope, and some things are grim now and then. But the overall message of the books tends to be hopeful. And the really neat thing is that there are no humans, so the gender roles are-- not exactly inverted, but much different. The characters known as 'queens' are the most powerful physically; the male protagonist winds up expected to play a decorative role like a fairytale princess, and has to struggle to subvert those expectations.

Farmsister just texted me that she's managed to borrow an ebook of the Cloud Roads trilogy from the library, so she can read it to herself on their trip. (This is the one time of year she gets to read books for pleasure, mostly while hiding from her in-laws.) "It's sounded right up my alley," she said, "but I never have time to sit and listen when you're reading it."

So she's reading it now, and I've just begun to wonder if I couldn't make a stuffed doll Raksura somehow... I need another sewing project in my copious free time, after all.