Brian...Consider yourself lucky that you are around kids that have been able to keep that naievete (sp?) that children are supposed to have. I know some that have been able to, as well. Unfortunately, I have also been around far too many who, because of their life circumstances, have not been able to keep that, and actually make the kids in
Ender's Game look fairly naive.
I think your point about Ender and the other kids in Card's work does have validity to it. However, there are kids who do have that - I don't know, world-weariness to the point of being completely jaded - to them at a very young age. And that is really sad.
I think one of the problems in portraying kids - any kids - in literature, or in films and television, for that matter, is that there is such a stereotype of how kids are, that we adults tend to see any portrayal that varies from that stereotype as being over the top. And many times it is. I think there are places in Card's books when it is. But I also think one of the points of
Ender's Game and
Ender's Shadow, as well, is that, at the end of the day, kids get treated like kids no matter how precocious or experienced in the ways of the world they are. Or maybe this only reflects the frustration I remember at being seven or eight or nine years old and knowing that I was right and the adult was wrong, but just getting patted on the head and ignored or told to run along and play. I don't know.
Just my opinion.
