In many contemporary discussions of parenting, there is often a particular focus on children’s exposure to violence. Parents, teachers, and even news anchors assert that children in the 21st century are exposed to violence in unprecedented ways

Yet, throughout each story we have read thus far, the writing has been far gorier than anything I have ever seen in a children’s movie or video game. For example, Red Riding Hood eating her grandmother for a snack and drinking her blood, or The Little Mermaid feeling knives puncturing her feet at each step until they begin to bleed. Gore has held a significant place in children’s stories for hundreds of years.

I wonder if the violence in these stories impacts children differently than in contemporary examples because it is not senseless. Every instance of gore or violent actions has a clear attachment to right or wrong, so instead of promoting violence, these stories actually warn children against it. This is the difference between the violence in these stories versus the violence that children may see on video games, or in TV shows. Although, I still wonder, does violence have any place in media designed for children? Even though it is attached to a moral code, will any sort of violence that children are exposed to affect them?

I was destined for a life rotating around an axis of literature. Like a quick tumble down an endless rabbit hole, it was inescapable. 

When I was young, I spent every day at the public library with my nose glued to any sort of book. To this day all of my local librarians know me by name. In the first grade, I took after my favorite people and started my own library in the basement of my house. I named it after my great-grandfather, a Greek immigrant, and the originator of my surname. It was called The Athanasius Pantazopoulos Memorial Library, a certified mouthful. On a visit to the more accredited library, I was gifted a stack of due date papers for the inside of the covers of my books, and one roll of receipt paper. I spent every day of the winter of 2009 marking every book with a custom stamp that read “Property of Athanasius Pantazopoulos Memorial Library”. Then organizing them all with my own makeshift version of the Dewey Decimal System. 

The following summer I started a neighborhood newspaper called “Kids Page”. The staff consisted of my sister, my two best neighbors, and me (and of course my mother as our typist because none of us had any idea how to use a computer). Our cover story for our first issue was a thrilling interview with my neighbor down the street who worked as a librarian in our town. My article was followed closely by one about how a vicious fisher cat was loose in the neighborhood, but, in my eyes, nothing could be more exciting than knowing a real librarian. We peddled the newspapers to every house within a one-block radius and donated the 15-dollar profit to the animal shelter. 

While I have evolved deeply as a writer and reader since my days on the Kids Page staff and as a librarian at the APML, I never lost the spark of excitement that literature brings to me. No matter what happens, reading, writing, and lots and lots of time in the library are a certainty for the rest of my life.