"The Scarlet Letter" (Manga Classics) by Nathaniel Hawthorne (original story), Crystal S. Chan (story adaptation), and SunNeko Lee (art)

I bought a few more of the Manga Classics in August -- some that my kids weren't all old enough for when we first got into them a couple of years ago.  I think they can handle them now -- or, at least, they are for this one.  Since The Scarlet Letter centers around an adulterous love affair that produces a child, I wanted to wait until my youngest was old enough to understand what all that meant rather than being confused and asking questions she wasn't ready for.  

They handled that topic even better in this manga than Hawthorne does, I think.  Granted, it's been twenty-ish years since I last read it, but both times I read and studied Hawthorne's novel in college, I found it distasteful.  Not just because he tended to sermonize incessantly, or because he told us about most of the conversations and things that occur throughout the book rather than showing them to us -- those are just marks of older writing and changed tastes, on a whole.  No, it felt like Hawthorne's attitude toward Hester Prynne was not entirely kindly.  He wanted the readers to sympathize with her, clearly, but the narration almost has this prudish prurience to it.  He disapproved of sex outside of marriage, but he was also super interested in exploring the topic.

Maybe that was just my high school and college self reading into it more than was there -- I don't actually care enough about this story to want to revisit the novel itself to see if my impression is accurate.

Anyway, this manga adaptation is lovely, kind, and straight-forward.  It does show many of the Puritans to be overly stern, some to be hypocritical, some to be downright ungodly... and some to be kind and forgiving.  I appreciated that they didn't try to villainize all Christians or even all Puritans.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for the subject matter aforementioned.  Nothing smutty or provocative in the artwork or storytelling, but the storyline is what it is.