So I’m in the local Barnes & Noble the other day, and I sneak into the children’s section for a minute or two just to look around. I see that they’ve got some fairly nice-looking hardcover editions of children’s classics sitting on the bargain racks: Tom Sawyer, The Wind In the Willows, Anne of Green Gables… and The Scarlet Letter? Wuthering Heights? These are kids’ books? I read them in high school, and even then I may have been too young to really appreciate them. Did any of you guys read and actually enjoy these books as youngsters?
I loved Tom Sawyer and Wind in the Willows, amongst others. Did I really appreciate them? Certainly not, but I reread them at every stage of life and got a new appreciation from them…
Did you notice if they were “abridged” versions or complete versions? I remember reading “Gulliver’s Travels” in a youthful version, then when I read the real version I was surprised at how randy it was. If I remember, in the kid’s version Gulliver put out the fire in the palace of Lilliput by blowing water out of his mouth, but he actually used a different sort of “water” in the book by Jonathan Swift.
Yeah, I can’t really see a kid reading Wuthering Heights, especially if it’s abridged. The sexual tension in the story, along with the part where Heathcliff digs up Cathy’s corpse…
Actually, my mom read nothing but classics when she was younger. Well, not nothing BUT…living in Pakistan, there weren’t a lot of books for little kids like we have here. So when she and her siblings were young (i.e., eight, nine, etc.) fun books for them were stuff like Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre (don’t know if any of the American books came up…I doubt it).
I didn’t read those when I was younger. Recently I’ve read Wuthering Heights- I think I could have, having read it now. It is pretty easy, and really. Plus, it’s pretty violent, but not in your face- pretty subtle. Most of it goes over your head if you’re not paying attention. And I don’t think a kid would really get the sexual tension…and you could argue that what one might call “sexual tension” is simply a vicious cycle of abuse and violence. Ah, yes…something every kid should be acquainted with. 
The Scarlet Letter - Children’s Edition
The red “A” is now lower-case.