I tend to think that children's understanding of age-inappropriate themes and images in books (however you define age-inappropriate) is partially limited by their real-life experience of those themes, and their sensory experience of the images. If your experience does not include a related traumatic or explicit situation, the words you read are more academic, rather than resonating intimately with the actual emotional experience that you have had.
Did anyone else think of thestrals when they read this, or just me?
