[HPforGrownups] Reactions? excerpt from the LA times interview

[Peg Kerr]

No: HPFGUIDX 4643

Schlobin at aol.com wrote:

> I'm interested in people's reactions to this...
>
> Rowling bristles at comparisons--especially between Harry Potter and Peter
> Pan. Of J.M. Barrie's novel about a little boy who refuses to grow up, she
> said, "I find it a sinister idea. I find it stunted. I wouldn't want to go
> back to childhood. I've gotten much happier as I've gotten older. That's true
> of most of the women I know, not necessarily of the men I know. It's my
> feeling that men in general hanker after childhood much more than women."

Well. One thing that strikes me as I read this, that reminds me about the whole
children's book/adult book controversy, combining it with the thread I've been
prompting on moral development: I think that people who dismiss the Harry Potter
books as "just for children" are crazy, because the one of the central tasks of
the series is, how do you grow up to be a decent human being?  For adults, it's
just a restatement of the same problem that they have when they get up every day:
how do you live like a decent human being? The problems that concern Harry in
these books -- loyalty, resisting temptation, sticking to a task, braving one's
own insecurities, working with other people even when you can't stand them, etc.
-- better concern adults, too.  Or else we're all in big trouble.

Peg