We loved Charlotte’s Web read by E.B. White (see my post E.B. White and the spiral). That was Meg’s first audiobook.

Stacy-
I take your point about the snakes just needing to eat, but I don’t expect the tale to make that point. In literature, I’m interested in the story and the characters and in some element of truth in the telling about experience and emotion. I don’t expect truth to concern (or even necessarily include) facts. In this case, the narrator presents the tale from Rikki’s perspective, and in doing that his knowledge and sympathies are necessarily limited. It gave Meg and I a chance to talk about who was telling the story, and how it might go if it were from Nag’s perspective. Ultimately, she decided she was glad Rikki Tikki Tavi killed the snakes, so his friends could be safe. I’m fine with that.

A month or so ago, I checked out the Rikki Tikki book (with CD) — in an attempt to find some audio books. But we never listened to the CD because after the reading the book I felt uncomfortable with how “evil” the author portrayed the snake. The snake is just eating the food it has evolved to eat… I understand the book is from a different time period, and that there IS a conflict of interest between the parties, but I find myself not wanting to inundate my child with stories that are written without giving understanding to both perspectives.

On my good days, I can talk this stuff over with my son, but on my not-so-good days, I am already so fatigued with trying to find peaceful solutions to the conflicts we face everyday that introducing additional conflicts that are resolved violently just puts me over the edge.

Sorry to go off on Rikki Tikki here! How did/do you handle the death/murder of the snakes and all their children with Meg?