[HPforGrownups] Re: Harry Potter not a children's book?

[Margaret Dean]

No: HPFGUIDX 23762

caliburncy at yahoo.com wrote:

> Before I stop though I should say that I do agree with the points
> about morality being an indicator that it might be a children's book.
>  Much of adult literature is frequently less direct in the way it
> approaches moral issues than childen's books because adults are quick
> to feel like they're getting preached to.  So instead it comes in the
> form of philosophical ponderings, the aforementioned ethical
> ambiguity, and concealed social commentary.  The HP books, like most
> children's fiction, really only strongly contains the latter of these:
> concealed social commentary.  But it also features some more direct
> platitudes than you would be able to get away with in some "adult
> literary" circles.  Not that one way is better or worse than the
> other.  I really think there's value in both.

But there's a big difference between "not the sort of literature
approved of in modern, cynical, oh-so-enlightened 21st-Century
adult literary circles" and "not a children's book."  Well, yes,
nowadays if you want to tell a good story, if you want to give it
halfway-obvious moral underpinnings, if you want to write about
people actually =doing something= to =fight evil,= the only way
you're going to get it published is to market it as a children's
book (or possibly as one of the other defined "genres," such as
fantasy, which still value storytelling).  But throughout most of
the history of humankind you wouldn't have had to do that.  Pure
storytelling (like fairy tales) only got relegated to the nursery
because the grown-ups had decided it was shabby and
old-fashioned, not because it was in itself particularly suited
to children (or unsuited to adults, for that matter).

Harry Potter is a good story for people who like stories, no
matter what their age happens to be.


--Margaret Dean
  <margdean at erols.com>