"Is there anyone above the age of 10 who takes "Animal Farm" -- or anyone above the age of 14 who takes "1984" -- at all seriously?"
Yes, I'm fifty and I take both those books seriously...though I'm not sure what you mean by seriously...
I take them as critiques of "socialism" or "totalitarianism" in the same way that I take Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" as a critique of Enlightenment or his "Tale of a Tub" as a critique of idealism or hermeneutics.
Joanna