@Jake-Parker That looks great, @kylebeaudette!
I'm sad that modern kids can't go anywhere without adults or without a helmet, even in book. When my daughter (now 29) was about eight, she loved a series of books about a bunch of kids who went sailing around the English Lake Country all summer. No parents allowed. At one point, they wrote their father (who had been posted to a distant country) to ask if they could go out to sea. He replied by telegram, "Only duffers drown. Not duffers. Won't drown." What a great vote of confidence! (Even if it isn't realistic.) Of course this was the whole reason she loved the series!
Another great book about faith in kids is Understood Betsy.
An even more inappropriate example: The same daughter, during the same period, loved the Lang "Colored Fairy Tales" books. They were called that because each volume was a different color. We owned the blue one. But at some point we had checked another one out of the library and I was reading it aloud to her (the reading level was a little high) when a giant killed the child protagonists, chopped them into pieces, and buried them under the floorboards. I made a face and said, "Ew, gross! I'm going to have to skip this part!" I do think I explained why.
We eventually found a happy medium in Joan Aiken. And we both love A Series of Unfortunate Events. Or is that dated too, now? Some of the new developments in kidlit I'm very glad for, but I do think children are more capable of figuring things out, and can take things more tongue in cheek, than we give them credit for.
