Ginny's maturity (WAS Ginny inconsistancy?)

[Ebony]

No: HPFGUIDX 28231

> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Sofie " <sofie_elisabeth at y...> wrote:
> > I know this has nothing to do with the original thread for this  
topic but I'll ask you this now anyway. Did anyone else get the 
> impression from Ginny's behaviour in PS/SS that she was a lot 
younger than ten?  I thought maybe she was 6/7 and then CoS came out 
and I read it and i was thinking 'what Ginny's 11? She can't be'. 

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Cindy C." <cynthiaanncoe at h...> wrote:
> I hadn't thought about this, but you raise a good point.  If Ginny 
is 10 in PS/SS, then she is quite a bit different than the 10-year-
old girls I know, even the shy ones.  The ones I know would never 
hide behind their mothers, and they tend to roll their eyes a fair 
amount, all in pursuit of the most important of all life goals -- 
looking cool.  Perhaps British 10-year-old girls are different?
> 

*snerk*  Not the ones I spent mornings and afternoons this summer 
chatting with in and around Oxfordshire.  The #1 shock I had this 
summer is that the kids I met in England were much, much more like 
our kids here than they were different.  I am sure they'd all get 
along just fine.

I've found that I love teaching kids in grades 5-9, and can usually 
guess a kid's age in the 9-to-14 age bracket pretty accurately.  
(It's fun chatting with moms and kids in the doctor's office, at the 
grocery store, or at the mall... "Let me guess, you're ten."  "HOW 
did you know?"  "I teach middle school."  "Oh.")  And Ginny is PS is 
NOT ten.  Not in the UK, not in the US, not in the Third World (where 
ten is actually older in many ways than in Westernized cultures).  

EVERYONE notices how young Ginny is in Book One.  One of my students 
is reading the books right now, and that was one of the *first* 
things she said about PS.  

Which brings to mind a thought--is Gin's age or the fact that she's 
going to Hogwarts the next year ever mentioned in PS/SS?  I can't 
remember that it was.  I wonder if JKR introduced Gin in CoS not 
necessarily to foreshadow the fact that she's going to be the love 
interest, but because she needed someone to open the Chamber?

Penny's already plugged it, but go to the archives and read her 
message on this subject--#21306.  Great stuff.

--Ebony (who missed teaching adolescents so much that she swapped her 
snarky junior classes for silly freshmen last week when the quarter 
ended... and is now enjoying her job again)