When I was fairly young I was TERRIFIED by one of the Grimms fairy tales ... I buried the book at the back of the closet and STILL had nightmares.

I think Divergent is actually a good book for processing issues about separating from family, choosing one's own identity, and stuff like that. I think for a teenager it could be a really healthy book. But my 10 year old is not really mature enough to be encountering that stuff in her own life yet. I've gotten to a lot of peer on peer violence, and relying on Wikipedia I see that things coming include a friend committing suicide, and both the protagonist's parents being killed. Especially as the story is told first-person, which in my opinion increases immediacy, that seems kind of heavy for my 10 year old.

Part of the peer on peer violence includes a gruesome eye stabbing that freaked my shit out. I'm wondering if/how that's going to be done in the movie.

Dammit, now I wanna read it.

It's good stuff. I'm not crazy about the last book in the trilogy, but, eh. The first 2 were pretty dang entertaining.

It's not my kind of book AT ALL. For starters, I hate first person narration, and I don't like post-apocalypticism as a genre, and the violence upsets me. I would never have picked it up if Casper hadn't asked me to.

I think your best bet is being honest with her about the way you feel about the book, and why, but then let her read it if she insists.

If it upsets her, do you think she'll come to you to talk about it? Or can you at least suggest that she do so if she wants to discuss the book?

Yeah, I think Amy's got the right idea here.

I think the English teachers just presume that everybody is miserable in high school and need literature that validates that. But Emmett is not by nature miserable.

Eh, I suspect it's more about trying to teach critical thinking skills and analysis inside a relatively easy to understand framework than a presumption of misery, from what I dimly recall from my high school literature days. Our lit and history classes also kind of dovetailed, but more in a regional than thematic way. (That was all about IB structure, though--would've been nice if they'd aligned them.)

That said, they should totes magotes be reading Garcia Marquez, damn it. Back in my day, we did!

with a kid, it seems worthwhile to know your kid's sensitivities at a given age (at this point, I'm not talking about Casper or any specific kid, just the idea of monitoring what media your kid consumes) and make that judgment call of "Hey, this might upset you; do you want to pass on it for now and maybe give it a shot later?"

This. I read Helter Skelter when I was in 8th grade. Gave me nightmares all winter.

Yeah, I think I will have The Divergent Talk tomorrow. I guess this is the epitome of tween-dom, having a kid who wants to read Little House on the Prairie (and yes, we've had a talk about what "Indian Territory" means) and Divergent at the same time.