“Seren ignored the sting of the fly sucking blood from her ankle. She pushed her lips into the salty skin of her knees, pressing the sobs back behind her teeth. This is the last night, she told herself. The last night with her back to the wall, shrunk into the corner, praying for morning. Whatever happened tonight, it would be the last time she slept with the lice scrabbling for purchace on her near-shaved scalp, and nesting in her pubic hair.”
Undersize me?
Oh no, another one of those fictional dwarves. A poor mother is sent away to prison, and the authorities come to drag her son away:
“He was eight years old; the top of his head did not even reach their waists.”
Just try to grab the nearest eight-year-old child and perform your own experiment: how tall is he/she compared to an adult? Sorry, but this is a pet peeve of mine; if you have to include little people in your books, please try to make them life-size.
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6 kommentarer:
Dorte - I had to laugh at your "Undersize Me" comment. You're absolutely right about the way children are sometimes depicted in stories, both physically and otherwise. It's so much better if the author is realistic!
Margot: they make this mistake all the time. Last year I read about an eight-year-old girl who was only half as tall as her teenage brother. I really doubt it.
Not something I had ever thought about but now you mention it .....
Tracy: I don´t know if the writer has children of her own, but most parents will know that an eight-year-old child is c 120-130 centimetres. A two-year-old is approximately half as tall as he/she will be as an adult.
My granddaughter is eight and she's certainly taller than my waist! An understandable pet peeve.
Kelly: I hope she is - if not she would be a midget :)
I don´t know if it seems so ridiculous to me because the sizes of children´s clothes in Denmark are often based on length in centimetres so that I would buy size 130 for my 8-year-old child, size 140 for age ten etc. Very useful because if *I* were to include a child in a novel, I would know exactly how tall the average child of that age is.
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