Age range of HP books

[jonathandupont]

No: HPFGUIDX 32377

WARNING : Ignore if you are sick and tired of this topic - I'll 
probably say nothing not said a 100 times before.

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Penny & Bryce <pennylin at s...> wrote:
> Hi --
> 
> hpfan04 wrote:
> 
> >   What age range do you think the HP books are intended for? I 
know
> > JKR said that she didn't write it for a certain age range, but, 
what
> > is the overall opinion?
> 
> I think we should go with what JKR has said: she didn't have a 
target 
> audience.  I agree with Amy Z that her initial letter to Chris 
Little 
> was a marketing/sales device.  It doesn't speak to her *actual* 
intent, 
> and there's certainly plenty of evidence from interviews later to 
show 
> that she must have changed her mind (or fudged just a bit when she 
said 
> age 9-12 in her "please look at my manuscript" letter to Chris 
Little).

Well, possibly - but it does indicate what target audience she 
suspected they would sell best for. And what's to stop her writing a 
children's book for herself...

I must look up these no target audience quotes - all the ones I ever 
see always imply she's kind of writing for children. 

eg.

"I write something I know I would like to read now. But I also wrote 
something that I know I would have like to read at age 10."

"Real literature can be for people of 9 and that's what I'm trying to 
achieve."

Hasn't she commented on her previous (abandoned) adult works and kind 
of drawn a distinction between that and her HP stuff? I mean, she 
thought of it as different. She's not quite as clearly aligned as 
Phillip "Children's books are the last hope for narrative" Pullman 
(quoted on the BBC programme doing his normal speech, by the way), 
but I've never seen her really repute it.

<snip FAQ plug etc.>
 
> Isabelle said:
> 
> > I believe that each book is specifically targetted at a readership
> > of Harry's age at that time.
> 
> I think it's fair to say each book will be appropriate for readers 
who 
> are the same age as Harry & his peers at that time.  

JKR is doing something quite unique with this hero actually growing 
up theme - I can't really think of a similar attempt in fantasy 
offhand (well, apart from Pullman, but that wasn't exactly gradual). 
She's very insistent that she won't change a word and that it is 
going to get "darker" - so, yes, the later books will probably be 
slightly different. Whether that makes the mature children's books or 
adult literature is a matter of opinion, I would suppose.

> In our last round of discussions on this topic, someone (Heather? 
> Cindy?) mentioned that it may come to pass that the series as a 
whole 
> will eventually be viewed as a hybrid.  SS & CoS will be classed as 
> young adult or juvenile, while PoA will be a hybrid, and GoF & the 
last 
> 3 books will be classed as adult fiction.  I think this has some 
merit. 
>   In so many ways though, the series defies classification into a 
narrow 
> genre of any sort.


> Penny

Defies classification is about right - not just in age - HP is really 
a hybrid of a school story, adventure story and a good deal of other 
stuff. It's hard to classify it as one alone.

I'd question GOF as adult fiction though - I'd need it to be a lot 
darker and so on than that. Then again, I may be contaminated by "A 
Song of Ice and Fire" and similar, which kind of makes a mockery of 
most "mature" fantasy like stuff in one sense.

Jon