My Ántonia
Acceptable with guidance. Age: 15+. A Catholic review of this book for parents.
Our review
Jim and Ántonia grow up as friends on the wide Nebraska prairie. Ántonia's family is poor and her life is very hard. She keeps working and loving, and she ends up with a big, happy family. This is a beautiful book about a hard life well lived. Ántonia suffers poverty, grief and betrayal, and she ends as a joyful mother of a large family. A Catholic reading list for ages fourteen and up mentions it in passing. It has a suicide, an attempted rape and a child born outside marriage, all told with restraint, so it needs a parent's framing.
For parents
Read aloud from about fourteen. Independent reading from fifteen, which suits 10th grade. Common Sense Media says 12+, and the Catholic list says 14 and up. Lumen follows the Catholic placement and adds a year because of the themes. From Common Sense Media and Wikipedia: Ántonia's father takes his own life, there is a later murder-suicide, a man tries to assault Ántonia and Jim stops it, and Ántonia has a child by a man who deceives and leaves her. Talk about suicide with care and with the Church's teaching: life is God's gift, and we pray for those who die this way and trust them to his mercy. Ask: what does the land ask of the Shimerdas? Why does Jim admire Ántonia all his life? How does she answer being betrayed? Talk about motherhood and family as her victory.