A question for parents.

[jferer]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C6262
From: jferer
Subject: Re: A question for parents.
Reply To: [Yahoo! #6229] Re: A question for parents.
Date: 8/8/00 3:47 pm  (ET)

My six year old has had no trouble with any of the books. I think
well-prepared kids take the books on the level they're ready for. The
rest goes over their head.

What I think JKR has done is interesting and subtle. She's bringing her
young readers along into a more mature view of the world that a lot of
adults haven't acheived. They are learing important things:

1. Bad is really *bad*. This is really important. How many young people
are growing up thinking that the bad guys are cool, or at least really
not that bad? It starts with "monsters" in Scooby-Doo and keeps going
with half-funny Disney villains. There's nothing funny about Voldemort,
and I think that's the way it ought to be. There are things worth fighting
and dying for.

2. Things aren't black and white. Here we are with Fudge, a pleasant
enough old codger, but also a head-in-the-sand apparatchik who just
wants to protect his cushy job, doing evil's work by not stepping up
to the plate against Voldemort; and Snape, a truly nasty so-and-so who
is about to risk his life a second time against evil. Where else can a
young person get that to chew on?
Another example: Hermione really starts to care about something outside
herself (house-elves), gets energized and caring and motivated, and
finds out it's not as simple as she thought.

3. Heroes pay a price. This rarely happens in the movies or TV. Harry's
been hurt since he was one year old and his parents were slaughtered. Now
he's lost a friend and he's suffered some more, and he isn't done paying.

Where else in literature do you get this? I think JKR is doing a masterful
job at bringing this stuff home to her public.