Another Book Question

[kriadydragon]

I have an original story idea at the top of my writing list, but a part of me is hesitant because it features a child (around eleven years old) befriending a male adult who's around thirty, and I'm a little worried that some might perceive that as creepy.

Has anyone read stories about a little kid befriending an adult? And I don't mean the usual little kid and his/her elderly mentor/teacher/whatever. I mean male adults between the age of twenty-five and thirty-five.

For the record, what I have in mind I feel will work but I think it will help knowing that other authors have ventured into such territory and made it work as well. In other words, I need something that will shut my paranoia up.

Comments

[ga-unicorn.livejournal.com]

The Big Brothers and Sisters organization makes this not as unusual as you would think. My youngest brother had a Big Brother. They were "together" for a year before Kyle (the BB, who was a lawyer) had to move to another state, but they still wrote and talked to each other on the phone constantly.

[parisindy.livejournal.com]

there is a movie called 'about a boy'

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276751/

[sholio]

Unfortunately the first examples I came up with -- like Diana Wynne Jones' "Fire and Hemlock" or the "Blade of the Immortal" manga -- end up with a romance eventually developing between the kid and the adult, when the kid is older. Not really what you're going for. *g*

I agree with ga_unicorn, though, that there's nothing inherently inappropriate about it, and lots of real-world examples of adult mentors or close (and healthy!) relationships between kids and their parents' friends.

There's Harry and Molly in Dresden Files. Or Harry and any of Michael's kids, really.

Several of Stephen King's novels are about little boys becoming close friends with adult men -- "Hearts in Atlantis" had a good example of a relationship of this kind, between the little boy protagonist and his elderly neighbor, and there's also Jake and Roland in the Dark Tower series.

"Fly by Night" by Frances Hardinge is a pretty nifty fantasy novel in which an orphan girl of about 11 leaves her village and travels with an adult male con artist, and becomes friends with him.

In Ted Naifeh's "Courtney Crumrin" series, the central relationship is between the little girl protagonist and her uncle (though it might not totally count because they're related?).

One of my favorite novels from my teens, "Rusalka" by CJ Cherryh, is about a twenty-something rascal (rapscallion? skalawag? I can't come up with a term that doesn't sound like it's being used by an elderly schoolteacher *g*) who gets in serious trouble and ends up running away into the wilderness with a teenage orphan boy with magic powers. Adventures ensue, and the two become close friends.

And there's Harry Potter and Sirius Black ...

[a-pilgrim-soul.livejournal.com]

I don't think you need to worry about this at all, if you write their friendship as an innocent one then that's exactly what it is. If anyone interprets it differently then its their own messed up psyche and not your problem.

[obsessed1o1.livejournal.com]

I'm currently writing a book about an adult that befriends a young boy and i have to say that i had the same reservations about whether it crosses a line or feels "creepy" but the circumstances of their friendship means that it makes sense and there is no "romantic" element to it. It's simply a tale of a boy who becomes friends with his neighbour, seeing him as a "father figure" rather than anything else.

I think unfortunately, with the way that the word is today and the types of people out there that do take advantage of young children, it's very difficult to write male adults being friends with children (especially girls), when we wouldn't think any differently about a female adult becoming friends with a child.

buddies

[(Anonymous)]

I think it totally depends on how you write the relationship. I think there are wonderful stories written about a man and a young boy becoming friends. It could be seen or written as a friendship bond, a brother bond, a father-son type bond or uncle-type bond. Either way, it can be a very positive thing. Young boys do need positive male role models and usually do look up to someone older. -Diane