Should Books Have Ratings?
According to a WENN report from this morning, there are plans in the works to introduce an age-based rating system for books as there is for movies, TV, and video games.
Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy that the recent move The Golden Compass was based on, is fighting the plans. He says the rating system would be damaging to young readers.
I happen to agree. As someone who skipped straight from the kid-friendly Goosebumps series to the teen series Fear Street when I was only about 8- or 9-years-old, and then skipped right up to Stephen King novels at eleven, I believe my reading skills would have suffered if I was prevented from reading the books I chose. Granted, I pulled most of these books from my mother’s bookshelf or the library with her permission, but my point still stands. It’s hard enough to get children interested in reading in the first place. Preventing them access to certain content would only make things worse.
For example, what rating do you suppose the first Harry Potter novel would have had? Safe for all ages? How about the seventh Harry Potter novel? Surely it would at least get a PG-13-equivalent. How many of the devoted Harry Potter fans would be prevented from reading the last few installments until they were older?
Worse, what if this ratings system were to be applied to non-fiction books as well? Would children be prevented from learning about the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II because the content is too mature?
As an avid reader, I feel that a ratings system for books would be as bad as the banned books list we see every year. Of course young kids should read certain content (and sometimes I think I shouldn’t have been reading King novels at such an early age, but I turned out okay), but it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the library or the local Barnes & Noble to police what kids are reading.
What do you think - should publishers put ratings on books? Should there be laws that require bookstores and libraries to comply?
