HP as children's book - Remus and the moon - Doomed

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 22317

B wrote:

>But if
>you talk to them about the books, they don't have the same
>understanding as do the adults I've known who've also read the books.
><snip>  I just believe the Harry Potter books are adult books that
>are being enjoyed by children, and not the other way around. <snip> 
That's my friend's concern - that it *will* redefine what children
>are expected to read, and they'll be pushed into reading books that
>are more than they can handle. <snip> I was an advanced reader, and 
I've no doubt I could have
>read all four books by age 8. But at that age, I was plowing through
>Trixie Belden - I wasn't reading adult novels (a friend recently told
>me she read Lord of the Rings at age 10 but didn't "get it" until she
>read it as an adult - same sort of thing, I think).

Well-put, and I agree with your friend's point that kids who can't 
really handle or understand them might read them because everyone is, 
even if they don't enjoy them.

People tend to refer to 6- and 7-year-olds when they voice these 
concerns, and it's probably true that the books, even 1, are too old 
for most kids that age.  If we figure that the publishers called PS/SS 
a children's book because the hero was 11, then let's say 11 is the 
publisher's (*not* JKR's) target audience.  Any 11-year-old with an 
average reading ability would be able to comprehend PS/SS.  The thing 
is, kids do not wait a year before they read the next book!  GF is too 
much for many 11-year-olds, I'm sure, both in terms of comprehending 
the sentence structure and vocabulary, and (even more) in terms of 
understanding the subtleties of meaning.

However, I'm not sure what the problem is.  My only concerns about 
kids reading beyond their level are 

(a) they'll get discouraged and give up on reading, 
(b) they'll be scared/overwhelmed/introduced to aspects of life that 
they aren't developmentally ready for, and 
(c) there's a lot of it that they just won't get.

For (a), maybe your friend can say otherwise, but I am not seeing this 
happen with HP, nor hearing about this from elementary school teachers 
or parents of young children.  Most of the younger kids are having it 
read to them, for a start (this could be the reason, in many cases, 
why it's taking weeks to read it).  For (b), parents and others who 
know the kid well will have to judge whether he/she is ready for it.  
I have friends who have read their kids 1-3 but are holding off on 4. 
 I know one little girl whose parents read her SS when she was 6, and 
regretted it; she was scared.  The next year, they tried again and she 
loved it and has motored through the rest (again, having them read to 
her).  She loves Remus Lupin, so something good is happening <bg>.  
When it comes to adult topics, sex, I think, tends to go right over 
kids' heads (I recall reading things where I thought I was getting 
sexual jokes but I wasn't getting them at all; I could pick up on the 
fact that something was supposed to be funny/risque, so I laughed, but 
I didn't really understand it); scary stuff, though, might give them 
nightmares.  This is so idiosyncratic, too; I was terrified of the 
picture of Alice with the long neck as a child, and it was on the 
cover!  I made my dad cover it when he read me the books.

Concern (c) is not really a concern for me.  These books work on many 
levels.  There are lots of books that I read when I was "too young," 
but still enjoyed, and re-read as an adult to much deeper 
understanding.  I read _Animal Farm_ when I was 11, for heaven's sake, 
and I hadn't a clue who Trotsky was.  (I'm still not sure, LOL.)  I 
still got a lot out of it:  not just a story about talking animals, 
but the social and political dynamics, even though I didn't know what 
the real-world parallels were.  

Or to give another example (it's so much fun to reminisce about 
childhood reading), my parents love Shakespeare and the theater, so 
I've been going to plays since I was about 8.  (I was ticked at being 
left home at about 6 or 7 when my sister, three years older, got to go 
to Hamlet).  The rule was that I had to read the Marchette Chute 
synopsis before we went so I'd be able to follow the plot, and my 
parents explained a bit as the play went along--not much, though.  I 
missed 90% of it, naturally, but I could follow the story and enjoy 
the language, even when I couldn't summarize what a speech meant.  I 
realize we could trade "this is what it was like for me" stories all 
week, but I'm saying all this precisely to say you don't have to be a 
prodigy to enjoy literature that is "too old for you."  Children of 
all ages and abilities do an amazing job of taking out what they can 
understand and leaving the rest.

On the flip side, I'm still getting new things out of Beatrix Potter 
and Ezra Jack Keats (I'm 33).  And I reread _The Secret Garden_ almost 
every year.

I just have to say that I know another little girl--the one whose dad 
won't read her GF yet--who got the plot of PA pretty well but still 
refers to Pettigrew as "that mouse."  She's 5 or 6.  I think it's 
hilarious that she can follow something as complex as that plot, yet 
can't quite get the distinction between a mouse and a rat--I bet they 
got to "rat" in SS and her sister explained, "It's like a mouse," and 
she's been saying that ever since.

> There are a lot of *wonderful*
>childrens' books out there (add this to the reasons to be frustrated
>with the NY Times list - an award winning childrens' book must have
>great characters, and excellent plot, AND be written on a level that
>can be understood by the target audience. Tell me it doesn't take as
>much or more effort to write a great childrens' book as it does to
>write an adult best seller!). 

Amen!

I also wonder which list they put young adult books on.  Or don't 
teenagers read enough for any of their books to make the best-seller 
list?

Amanda wrote:

>I always thought that it was probably a plot hole, but then I 
considered
>that Lupin has to take the potion every night. This might not have 
been
>Night 1 of this month's dosing. Like a one-year vaccine which is
>actually good for a few months beyond that, I supposed that the 
effects
>of the previous evening's dose had lingered a bit, but then the
>unbroken, clear moonlight finally overwhelmed it.

>Thoughts?  ::Amy, get out of that fetal ball and tell me what you
>think!:::

::whimpering like a cub::  (A werewolf cub, to address the other 
Lycanthropic Flint, is a transformed child.  Seven-year-old Remus 
turned into a werewolf cub once a month.  Isn't that the cutest thing 
you can imagine?  but I digress.)  

I think so too, but it can't be a hard-and-fast thing, or again, he 
could just stay inside, sipping his potion and keeping the shades 
down.  

The only real solution is that one way or another, the transformation 
into a wolf isn't as simple as full moon rises, bang.  There are a lot 
of factors at play--indoors/outdoors, potion/no 
potion/potion-recently-but-not-tonight, cloudy/clear, etc.  No 
combination will suffice to prevent the transformation altogether, but 
it might be delayed.

How's that?

Lyra, now Porkmaster, wrote:

>I can't believe I overlooked my favorite werewolf! Yes, I agree with
>everyone who thinks he might die in place of Sirius - in light of
>recent posts, I (sadly) give him 64%

Sigh.  I'm afraid you're right.

And then Jenny wrote:   

>If Harry dies I may go with him.

Look at us--we're a bunch of wrecks.  We may have to put a suicide 
hotline in place before each new release, just in case.

Amy Z

--------------------------------------------------
 The [Chudley Cannons'] motto was changed in 1972
 from 'We shall conquer' to 'Let's all just keep
 our fingers crossed and hope for the best'.
                      -Quidditch Through the Ages
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