Does anyone else sometimes wish books came with age certificates like movies do?

When I was younger I read all sorts of unsuitable books, half without realising it when I was too young for the content. There were also the ones I knew were bad but read anyway but that's a different story.

I think this is especially true for early teens when you get fed up reading about talking lions and want something more that isn't a serial teen drama called "my big ugly knickers and other traumas of being twelve" or something like that. So you go and read American Psycho because it looks interesting and then don't sleep for two years.

Just wondering what other people think, could it work? Would it just encourage young people to read the wrong stuff anyway, waving a big tantalising "you're not supposed to read this" flag above them? Is the kids, young adult and other sections in bookstores/ libraries enough?

I do think that books should also come with some kind of rating as to the suitability for the audience. Young minds are so impressionable. If they have something that they can read over and over that might not be suitable for their age and understanding, then it might cause them to act out in ways that are counter-productive as well as harmful to them and also society.

Hopefully, others will come along to offer their opinions also.

I would hope that the parents of these younger children would be aware of what their daughter/son would be reading. It's really the parents responsibility, in the end, isn't it? Obviously, this is idealistic and if children don't want their parents knowing something, they can usually keep it from them. However, I think that, in some cases, we in the US try to over-protect others, and that it generally back-fires. I wouldn't say I'm necessarily against this approach, but I don't know if I can fully back it either.

When I was growing up the librarians were the quality control. They would come out and say if the book was not fit for reading for the age. Or if the book was too advanced for the age. But then my hometown did not have a bookstore that we could go and buy books, so there were no options given. It was either the public or the school or the church library.

Many books for children already have that age certificate kind of thing going on - listing books by age. But I think the book the child reads should be dealt with between the child and the parent. I realize that happens in Happy Ever After Land and we certainly do not live there and many children are left to their own ways. Still, if you place a label on a book, you do open up that curiousity of why can't I read that? What is really so bad about that and how can I get ahold of that book? How would you placce the controls and who monitors if that child or teen buys a book beyond his or her age bracket and understanding?

There are books out there that might be considered harmful, we all know that. If a person reads a book and then gets the idea to go out and perform the same deeds as in the book, which result in a tragedy -- was it the book or was it the person? Would the person have not done this if he or she had not read the book? Or where the seeds planted in that person's heart and the book facilitated the blooming of those seeds? My high school Freshman English instructor (a little French nun) maintained that one cannot always blame the book. She said if someone has the inclination, that it will come out no matter what. That was 1966, mind you, and shock and horror just for the sake of it was not so well spread. The worst anyone could point to was "In Cold Blood", which was bad enough.

I know you can present the other side of that argument and do it very well and be justified. I would not want to be the one to make the categorical decisions on age and books. When I hear that one can download "murder manuals" off the net or instructions how to make bombs and put together weapons, it is all gone too far.