"Is this kid-friendly?"

So, the story I\'m working on basically starts with my main Protagonist sailing for adventure before running into a group of pirates. Said pirates fight him in Protagonist-Kun\'s crew and his gets a cut across his eye-and the eye is basically destroyed and needs to be removed. This is a big part of the story since...

1. This is how he gets one of the 7 Magical Macguffins that the REAL big bad wants.

2. This is the reason as to why he needs to get himself a new eye-which, in this case, is a magical Witch eye he wins in a card game and the eye is used to help detect the other Macguffins and other magical stuff.

I don\'t know how \'kid friendly\' Redwall is after the 1st book or Guardians of Ga\'hoole after book 4-and in the latter\'s case, I haven\'t read those books in forever, so maybe I\'m forgetting something-but I just wanna know if this is okay for a children\'s fantasy book or if I should just say \'fuck it\' and make this more of a teen/young adult fantasy book or something.

It would depend on how it's presented rather than what is presented.

If you described the losing of the eye in gory detail and dwelt on the pain and suffering, then it's not going to be kid friendly.

If you gloss over it, describe it in non-emotive terms or just have him start the book with the magical eye and explain that he got it because he lost his eye fighting pirates - maybe later mention that a group of pirates he encounters are the same ones he fought when he lost his eye - or have him start with only one eye and have the quest for the magical one as the first part of the book - basically skip over the actual squicky bits of losing it, then it should be fine.

As a kid I read plenty of stories with one-eyed/missing-limbed characters.

So, I thought long and hard about this, but ultimately...I decided to have the story stat with my Protagonist already having the eye, perhaps having him mention how he lost the eye in passing later.

Thanks for the advice!

Yeah, skipping over it and starting later is probably the safest bet.

Still, you can get away with quite a bit more in a written format than a visual format as long as your descriptions aren’t too graphic, even if it’s meant for kids. Stuff like Warriors and the series you mentioned could get pretty brutal for books written for middle schoolers. Depends on the age range you’re aiming for, though - I wouldn’t recommend going that far with something meant for eight-year-olds.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Sep 7th 2018 at 11:03:22 AM