题型：阅读理解 题类：期中考试 难易度：难
“How to Train Your Dragon” by British author Cressida Cowell is one of the best pieces of children’s literature. A child can make a whole new universe with a vivid imagination and Toothless, the hero’s hunting dragon, thus turning a rainy day into an adventure of a lifetime. However, if you have never read the book but instead choose to see the film version(版本), you might think you were seeing a new-age war movie meant for adults rather than children.
Let’s look at “Where the Wild Things Are” for further discussion. The story centers around a lonely eight-year-old boy named Max, who sails away to an island. Creatures living there declare Max their king. What an amazing piece of children’s literature! A treasure for every child’s library. Yet, children were crying in the movie theatre. Owls(猫头鹰) were falling from the sky, chicken’s arms were being torn off, and a child was running around a dark abandoned world fighting evil (恶魔) as the only human. It was almost as if Hollywood could not imagine children enjoying a movie for its basic literature content. Hollywood might be right. But more and more its audiences are complaining (抱怨) that there is an increased amount of violence in children’s stories today than in the past.
While there appears to be a trend in our society to make more violence more accessible to younger children, books and literature are generally an exception(例外). I truly believe that children’s literature has become more vivid, and more colorful. This is a great treasure for the children, and is certainly not violent. What has changed the children’s stories of today is not the writers, but the film industry. In some way, children’s literature is just being strangely twisted（扭曲）. I wonder how much influence the author have over this.
