How old should a child be before they are introduced to huck fin.
I basically feel like it should be when they can read it on their one but a parent should still read it too them?
More a question for folks from the US as its I think basically required reading for us. Probably the best introduction so racist ********** in a US context.
But perhaps a foreign perspective can be enlightning?
I first
heard both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, as audio stories on cassette tape - both very much abbreviated to fit into 1 hr of reading, and of course translated to German (I am German). This format added nice flavor by separating chapters with a few bars of traditional American music (spirituals, folk songs). Then already, Huck was the much more fascinating story, definitely a favorite among all my audibles. I don't recall my age when I first heard these stories, but I was certainly younger than 12, and may have been as young as 8 years old. At some later age - I'd reckon I was between 12 and 14 maybe? - I also read the full books (again, German translation), with much delight, and again, Huck beat Tom easily.
Now, as a child, I knew in a general sort of way some fundamentals of American history - discovery by Columbus, settled by immigrants fron various European nations, conflict with native nations, eventually a nation "USA" emerged as a melting pot of British, German, Italian etc immigrants, there were black slaves and these were freed but gained equal rights much later... Not sure how much of that history I knew when I first heard, and when I first read, Huckleberry.
BUT I never had trouble discerning that Huck's friend, the run-away slave Jim, was a good guy, that some people picked on him because he was black - and that those people are the bad people in the book, whereas Huck treated Jim with dignity and that made him a hero in that sub-plot. I may not have fully grasped why Jim was hidden from some people in some scenes; but the fundamental humanity in Twain's prose came through with total ease, without any adult guiding me.
Today, I don't remember by which words the black man was refered to in the German translations available to me - whether some equivalent of "******" was employed, or even that word its untranslated self. What I can attest is that reading the book did not make me refer to people of African descent by any derogatory terms.
I would not deny them their place in the body of literature, though. There's more to lit than just what I like.
