Harry Potter not a children's book?

[Sofie]

No: HPFGUIDX 23741

I know many of you have argued time and time again that the Harry 
Potter books weren't originally aimed at children however I'd like to 
point out some things that suggest to the contray.

My main point is the characters. Apart from Voldemort, not a single 
character could be described as entirely evil. Even Peter Pettigrew, 
betrayer of his friends, was once good. He can't have always been 
what he is now, otherwise good people like Remus, Sirius, James and 
Lily would not have been his friends. Even lucius Malfoy, who is not 
somebody I'd like to be enemies with has one redeeming quality. I do 
believe that he does genuinely care about his son. He may not show it 
obviously but the way he kicked up a fuss about Buckbeak biting Draco 
indicated his feelings to me. Yes he did get carried away with 
getting Buckbeak executed but if someone or something hurts your 
child your first instinct is to hurt it back. Anyway back to my 
point, Voldemort is the only one who could be described as entirely 
evil and he is a monster not human. All the other human characters 
have redeeming features. I believe this was so children don't get to 
scared by the books. Revealing that people can be evil to young 
children is never a good idea. The result of this is world-weary 
cynical children who don't know how to trust. The discovery of purely 
evil people should not be made until well into your teenage years if 
not as an adult. JKR is a mother who reads Harry Potter to her child, 
I don't think she could bear to subject Jessica to that knowledge.

My second, not as well thought out point is the morals behind the 
books. My main example of this will be CoS. This book brings up the 
issue of racism; pure-bloods,half-bloods and muggle-borns replace 
White, half-caste (I hate this term but couldn't think of a better 
one) and black. It also looks at how appearances can be decieving, 
Lockhart and Tom Riddle. How many of you guessed that these 
characters were not nice people before the end of the book? I think 
these parallels are there to teach children though they might not 
realise it about how society works.

Anways that's my thoughts, I'm not saying that the books can't appeal 
to Adults and that JKR didn't put in little references for adults but 
I think that originally JKR wrote these books for children and that 
in the end good will triumph over evil. And I think that because 
Joanne Rowling doesn't want to disillousian (I'm sorry for my 
appalling spelling but I have a complete block on how to spell that 
word!)any children.

Sofie.