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Age to read Homer
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We are currently working through the SCM Greek history guide. My 10 year old daughter has been reading the Black Ships Before Troy while I read The Iliad. After her narration, we share our favorite passages and discuss. She is begging me to let her read The Odyssey instead of The Wanderings of Odysseus. What should I do?
She is an intelligent girl, but not a genius by any means. I consider her to have a typical IQ. However, she LOVES language. Really loves language!!! Her commonplace book is full of poetry. Her favorite book in the entire world is Beowulf (translator Rebsamen). She loves the translation and has went on and on about how poetic it reads. I had her test read a couple pages of The Odyssey (translator Lattimore). She was able to narrate well (much better than me). She was begging to get to read it. She says it has “the most wonderful words, Momma!”and reads poetic.
What would you do? This child gives me a run for my money. She is so entirely opposite of me and my husband. She is drawn to language and art and nature and all things beautiful. I am drawn to checklists and math and science and organization and never received any education in the liberal arts. It is hard to parent and teach a child you can not relate to.
Btw if she reads it now I will still require it again in high school.
Thanks for your help!!
I am – and was – like your daughter! My dad was like you, though he was born in the 30s and got an excellent public education, so he loved the humanities as well. You and your daughter are a great match, because you’ll bring out different things in each other.
I would recommend – in addition to reading it, if that’s what she wants to do – getting an excellent audio of The Odyssey and letting her run with it. We listened to the one by Sir Ian McKellan, and I highly recommend it! My daughter was in early high school at the time. The language is incomparable.
I would pray about it and decide if you feel the content is appropriate for her. I have learned to not expose my children to something if I don’t have peace about it.
Grace Cox, Thanks for the reminder to screen content. I have never read The Odyssey. I do plan to read it (or listen to it) before I allow her access. Do you care to share what parts you might find objectionable. Although, Ill read a few chapters ahead, I doubt I get through the whole book before she would start on it (if she did). I’d appreciate any heads up you might have for me. I’d hate to start the book and then have to drop it half way through.
Your comments are very reassuring, especially given your similarities to my daughter. I love the idea of using an audiobook. I’m heading over to audible to listen to a sample now.I might be contacting you with more questions in the future. You’re the first person that hasn’t acted like my daughter is an alien (or assumed she was a genius) when I mention her interests. God has only given her (at this time) a modest amount of skills in the humanities, but he has bequeathed her with an overwhelming amount of affection for them. Thanks for your advice and thanks for understanding!
I’m having some technical issues. The above comment was made to alphebetika. It should have been part of the first comment where I thanked her for replying. Sorry for any confusion.
I just read The Iliad, The Odyssey. and the Aeneid…finished the last of it in August, so thought I’d throw in my two cents worth. 🙂
I love, love, love the Homer translations by Richmond Lattimore who was a poet in his own right so the flow of the words is melodic and beautiful. His Iliad translation is available on Audible narrated by Charlton Griffin snd it was wonderful. His pronunciation of those Greek words is fabulous and his mastery of the story is very good. However, the Lattimore Odyssey translation is not on Audible. 🙁 So I did a bit of research with the books I have.
I have 3 different translations of The Odyssey, and after comparing the writing styles and availability on Audible, I chose the Fagles version (which is the one that Anabetica recommended with Ian McKellan) because I wanted to listen and follow along. The Fagle version does have an occasional swear word in it. It’s not as good as Lattimore’s version, but much better than others.
I would think that the things that you might consider objectionable are mostly going to go over her head. I have discovered sometimes in our eagerness to protect our kids we draw attention to something that they wouldn’t have paid attention to in the first place…Shakespeare is the same way. 😉 She’s young enough that following the story line is going to keep her busy. If she has questions, be grateful you can be the one to have a discussion and answer the question. She’ll learn to trust you with hard questions and it will be a blessing later on.
Bottom line – if she wants to, let her read it. What a great confidence booster for her…hard things won’t be so intimidating after this! =)
Oh, Sheraz, thank you so much for saying (in your 2nd to last paragraph) what I was trying to figure out to say. I agree about Shakespeare, as well.
And, Kayla, your daughter is NOT an alien! I’m sure you already know this. 🙂 My oldest daughter was just this way, too. (The one in my avatar, the one who listened to The Odyssey and The Iliad, after we had taken turns reading them to each other. Alien me….hee hee). When she was nine, she read the Lord of the Rings trilogy three times in succession and was obsessed with it for at least a year afterwards. I felt like no matter what we started discussing, she would somehow bring it back to LotR. It was eerie – bwa ha! She wasn’t an alien or a genius, either. Just a kid allowed to be herself and explore her interests in a nearly unlimited way. Thank God for homeschooling, say I.
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