I think that we can all agree that the books of Harry Potter are good in the sense that they are getting children to read, however, there is a danger that some children, instead of moving to different genres will remain within a narrow-minded prism of fantasy. There is nothing wrong with fantasy books, as long as you don't base your whole reading on this since it doesn't deal with reality.

Is there a danger that children will think that the reality of the world is similar to the fictional world (in terms of morals, the good guys always winning aganist the baddies etc) when they become young adults?

I don't think that's saying much about kids.

Sure, when children read superman, they've been known to put on a red cape and "fly" around the living room. But when they grow older, do they still hold that to be true?

Of course not. The same goes with Harry Potter.

--cheers

Harry Potter was never intended to be a reflection of the real world. It is reading for pure pleasure.The same arguments could be advanced for Tolkien's works, Dr. Seuss, or just about any children's literature.
The main argument against children reading Harry Potter will come from religious parents who feel that the emphasis on witchcraft and sorcery is unhealthy and unchristian. But as a Catholic who is an avid reader of Harry Potter books as well as Tolkien, and who enjoys playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, I'm not about to agree with them.
Reading books and playing fantasy games involving "magic" does not make one a practitioner of the occult anymore than watching Disney films would.

If this is inspired by the whole MATRIX scandals, there's nothing to it. Teens with issues have issues due to problems in their lives unrelated to any piece of fiction. The problems lies deeper than an "obsession". The delusion is a product of the underlying problem. It's the parents who need to have a better repour with their children. Not ignoring them and allowing TV and the computer to become the babysitter. If parents weren't so self absorbed and unaware of what's going on in their own homes and their childrens lives, this subject wouldn't be an issue.

As far as the witchcraft issue is concerned, that's the parents discretion if they want their child to read the books or not.

Children are kept away from all the most enriching and fun things like beer and tobacco. Sometimes those bans are carried over to the general population. Would you like fiction to be banned as unproductive and over-stimulating? That sounds like 1984. Is reading fiction harmful like tobacco or beer? No, it's essential. When I was in 2nd grade I heard To kill a mockingbird on audiotape driving across the country. That was fiction; it had suicide and rape. How can an adult say it harmed me?
What if all books were about good Christian children who obeyed their parents and ate nutritious foods? That would be mind-numbingly boring.

Absolutely right. Just because we may not agree with contents of the material, there is still a thing call the freedom of speech. It is a parents duty to instill morals into their children, but there comes a point where they have to think for themselves and become a unique individual. Suppressing the imagination is a very harmful thing, but so is not nurturing it by not talking to your kids and finding out what's on their mind and showing an interest in them and what they like.

Unfortunately, in the current popular culture milieu, the danger is that they won't pick up the fundamentals of the fictional work created by Rowlings. Namely, that there is good and evil, and that everybody is going to be affected, if not participating in, the eternal struggle betwixt the two.

I find it incredible that we have some people (on all sides of the socio-political spectrum) who will argue that we need art and literature becuase of the good it can bring. Literary types who expound for hours on the impact that "Catcher in the Rye" had on them as a teen, yet who fail to understand that the impact can also be negative.

I like the Harry Potter books. I've read all except the most recent. Rowling deals with the timeless issues of growing up. Good, evil. Fitting it. False accusations. Friends. Crummy parents. Not being understood. Finding a purpose in life. Noxious people. That's the reality she writes about, all the rest is just window dressing...

May you always make your Saving Throw. BD

Is there a danger that children will think that the reality of the world is similar to the fictional world (in terms of morals, the good guys always winning aganist the baddies etc) when they become young adults?

An extremely small percentage, maybe, and they would have been lost anyway, to some other world, probably of their own making.

I don't think so, not for the most part. But even if there was, is that such a bad thing? Fantasy is better than reality anyway.



That's true, and the trials of adolecsence especially show in the fifth book. So even if kids don't realize what they're reading has this underlying meaning, maybe somewhere in their subconscious they're picking up on it.

To begin, children can only read the Harry Potter series for so long before they must move on to other works of fiction. Even if they don't move on from another genre there is still enough diversity even within fantasy to present different portrayals of both "good" and "evil", and the struggle that encompasses them. It's also no more likely to harm the world perspective of growing children anymore than The Lord of the Rings trilogy or The Chronicles of Narnia. As best I can tell we don't have any hobbits or rangers running around short of movie openings and Halloween. I'm sure we'll be fine with young Mr. Potter as well.


As I said above: unlikely. It may help to shape their unique perspective on morals as would any work of fiction or nonfiction, but it won't risk them having any weak sense of reality in the process. Just like the popular series' before it, Harry Potter will not prevent people from making the distinction between reality and fantasy.

It seems to me children are much more liable to get a skewed perspective of reality from watching the news than they are from reading a fantasy.

When I was little I had a collection of Hans Christian Anderson Fairytales. I think most of these were horrible stories for children, but many of them probably taught some important lessons. I dont remember any of them because they were pretty depressing.

Peter Pan was full of magic, children that could fly, fairies and a land only for children, good and evil etc. We also read Alice in Wonderland, which I dont really consider a childrens book now, all that pill popping and corresponding hallucinations, but as kids you dont really know, its all just fantasy.

I love the Harry Potter books. I think Rowlings has revived something for children that was in danger of being lost, a magical land full of color and fantasy but also where they have the power to make a difference, to compete in a healthy way, to use the special talents they have as individuals, good over evil, that life is not always fair and not all grown-ups are always right. Rowlings writes FOR children not as an adult preaching TO them about the hard lessons of life.

Its too bad that the Harry Potter series tops the list (1999) of challenged books because of wizardry and sorcery.
I think some parents have lost the sense of fascination they had when a child, or even as an adult. (ExCalibur comes to mind as well as King Arthur, the Odessy, or authors, Shakespeare, Jack London, Asimov, Hemmingway or even Tom Clancy in adult reading)
Some parents seem to be taking things all too seriously and forget that reading is an adventure, of other times and magical places, a healthy escape.
How did it come about to bleed fantasy and magic out of childrens books? Are they really that insecure about books undermining basic religious values?

I havent seen kids take to books like the Potter series in a long time. Its so important that children are enjoying reading again! This has to be the #1 benefit.

Side Note for those with kids, maybe especially girls:
As a young girl I found a book called, The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Spear. My reading was never very well directed, unfortunately, because I read all the time. I was lucky to find it, it's a book I was so moved by Ive remembered it all my life.
Its about different cultural values and inherant cultural predjudice, set in Puritan times. I think it's now part of the reading curriculum in some schools. I recommend it highly. Reading Level 5.
http://www.eduscapes.com/newbery/59a.html

I love the Harry Potter books. I don't know if I can point to a specific reason why, and it's not really important that I do. But they have never made me want to only read in the fantasy genre... And even if they make kids like that genre, it gets them reading. I think that's the most important part. If you can make someone realize that reading is actually fun and enjoyable, one day you can probably make them realize that there are other types of books out there. It's a point to branch off of...

I've always loved to read, but sometimes it's hard for me to find books that look interesting to me. When I was younger, I really liked fantasy-type books. They were fun to read and presented a different kind of world to imagine.

Yet the Harry Potter series, in some ways seem a little less a fantasy book than some others can be. (Don't get me wrong, it still is fantasy, I certainly don't think of it as reality.) And as several people have mentioned, like most fantasy books, the underlying themes are still based in reality. Good and evil is not black and white, as books can make it seem at times, but they still are part of out lives. And Rowling, in the Harry Potter series, encompasses many of aspects of growing up-- even if, in this case, it means growing up in a world of witches and wizards and a magical castle in the English countryside.

There is something I don't understand, it's what singling out only the harry potter books? There are a lot of others fantasy stories and fairy tales that exist and that are told to children, and this has never been a problem.
Didn't your mother tell you some when you were young? I remember my mother telling me the andersen's stories, and thought it made me very sad,I enjoyed them, and it never caused me any trouble, as for the Perrault's tale, the 1001 nights, and many others. These are children books, and don't assume that the children can't make the difference between fiction and reality, they can, there are not that stupid, and if it can give them the taste of reading, that's a good thing.

The primary reason for singling out the Harry Potter books is their tremendous popularity and impact. Remember, book #5 slammed to the top of the best seller list weeks before it was even released, based on pre-sales alone.

The books are very engaging, but parents always get worried when kids flock to anything en masse. It has far less to do with the content of the books themselves, and more to do with the phenomena of adult concern over mass odd behavior by kids.

i don't think that (being a child myself) the harry potter books have any influence on our sense of realism; of what is real and what is fantasy. Sure we like to escape to the harry Potter books and enjoy a few hours pretending to be witches or wizards, but we know enough to understand the difference.

I don't think that books can really influence people unless they've been written with that intention. I don't think you're going to walk around the streets and see teenagers wearing robes and pointing sticks at each other.

Damn, I wondered why people were looking strange at me!

I think people misunderstood what I was getting at. My whole point was the skewed Harry Potterish viewpoint of the world, that whole simple black-and-white moralism.

Children are unconsciously being inculated with the idea that in the "real" world the good always defeat the "bad". In America, where that popular culture is already totally dominant (Hollywood films) the population have a tendancy to see things in a simplistic manner, "Good guy Bush taking on Bad guy Saddam".

That doesn't lead to a informed realistic and a healthily sceptical public which understand that most issues and politics are shades of grey rather than the Hollywood-Harry Potter worldview of good versus bad.

I got a different perception of what your point was I guess. I thought you were saying that if child reads a book because it's harry potter(fantasy), it's hard to get them excited to read the newspaper(real life stuff) or a textbook for that matter. In that case, I would have to agree. However, since that was not your point, I'm sorry for the derailment.

Sorry if I/we/any of us confused your point thomas!

But now that I think I know what you meant... as I think I briefly mentioned before and others have said, good and evil isn't black and white as Harry Potter and other fantasy books can often make them seem.

But if you all will indulge me on a little Harry Potter analyzation... (it will only take a minute, I promise )
Okay, so as for the shades of grey in Harry Potter itself, it seems to me that Rowling has actually been bringing them out a little bit more as the books have progressed. As Harry gets older, things have changed a little bit. It seems to me that it isn't as black and white as it could be. And I expect that if you delve deep enough, (or sometimes, not so deep) you'll see where the black and white actually mix. (geez, I don't think I've used the black and white analogy enough )

But I guess maybe the question is whether or not young(er) kids will pick up on the subtlties. I still hold, however, that the fact that kids are, indeed, reading, makes a huge difference.

The target audience for Harry Potter books is about 8 - 13; I think most children of these ages are able to differenciate between fact and fiction.

As for the 'black and white moralism', I think Star Wars was more black and white than Harry Potter.

IMHO, the real issue about Harry Potter is the obsessive way that some children (and adults) read it, and therefore the narrow range of reading materials that some of these children are being exposed to; and that the main motive for many these readers is the commercialization and hype surrounding the books. (Whether this is better then nothing at all, I don't know.)

I like walking around wearing a robe and pointing a stick at people!
In context, I enjoy Renaissance Festivals.

Previous posters have emphasized the triumph of right over wrong, loyalty to friends, growing up issues, etc. as positives of the Harry Potter series.

I just plain enjoy it. It's a fun, fantasy diversion for older folks like me. And I haven't tried the Latin phrases to change something into something else or make a potion. Somehow I doubt they would work...

I think in this case people who fear the possible glamorization of witchcraft should lighten up a little. There is a church in my state where members recently burned Harry Potter books (and the Coneheads movie--and I was looking for that one! ) in front of their church! It's their choice. But I think the statement people actually inferred from their behavior was not the one they intended (visions of Hitler, anyone?).