Harry Spoilers and the Something of Something Else

and how come we can’t use lists in comments? I went to all that trouble, too . . .

Good list of “Harry Potter crankies”. I agreed with every one. I thought the Wizard Fascism, or as I like to call it, “magicofascism”, was blunt, even for a kid’s book. Ending was sickly sweet.

Even though pages 200-500 were kind of forgettable, I liked the despondent mood, she set up.

If HP had died, I was prepared to go around annoying people by calling him “Harry Potter, Virgin Martyr”.

Finally, I think the shape-changing will make for interesting scenes in the fim. Will children watch a “balding middle-aged man and his mousy wife” for as long as the book made it feel.

Voldemort doesn’t really confine himself to England. He spends most of the book in Continental Europe. His political focus is mostly on England because that’s where his power base is, but I don’t doubt that he would have become a problem elsewhere if he had not died. Hermione probably sent her parents to Australia not because Voldemort couldn’t go there, but because it made them much harder to find.

Also, I quite agree with Kieran’s remarks. Rowling’s ideas were good, but executed badly, and I think the book suffered from adhering completely to Harry’s POV when more interesting things were happening elsewhere. The middle ground between the completely uncritical fan and the person who’s too snobbish to enjoy these books at all is an awkward place to be.

My daughters aren’t yet old enough to read (or to have read to them) JS&MN–or even “His Dark Materials”. The Chronicles of Narnia, though I liked them as a kid, induce nausea in me now.

That leaves (more or less) HP. Or else Tolkein, which (if you’re honest with yourself) often feels equally plodding and contrived, and whose cardboard cutout female characters cannot generate a tenth of the interest that Hermione Granger can.

Roald Dahl has some good fantasy books (“The Witches” might the wizarding world as seen from the perspective of Petunia Dursley.) I need to get a new copy of “A Wrinkle in Time”. Any other suggestions?

(I agree that Susanna Clarke is the real deal. I’d willingly wait outside Borders–in a goofy scarf even–in order to buy books 2-7 of hers. Anyone know if a sequel is in the works?)

TDH does have some memorable asides. In reference to the book Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches, Ron says: “…I’ve learned a lot. You’d be surprised, it’s not all about wandwork, either.”

My 6 y.o. daughter will be very happy that none of the a-list characters were killed off. (She’ll surely wrench that information from me in the next few days.)

BTW, the third hallow is still just sitting on the ground in the Forbidden Forest, right? Where students serve detention? Isn’t Harry worried about some kind of One Ring effect that will lead to someone finding it?

On V confining himself to England: obviously, it’s a flaw (one carried through the whole series, regardless of tentative nods to France and Russia), but not a rare one. Hollywood has been confining its omnipresent criminal masterminds to the USA for decades, and nobody seems to mind. I’ve lost count of the movies I’ve seen where the protagonists are desperately on the run, with nowhere to hide, and the possibility of going even to Mexico or Canada is never discussed.

Maybe it just seems strange when you change the coordinates.

The epilogue was truly, truly awful, totally nauseating. And badly written as well; I can’t stand it when characters have conversations that no human being would ever have and that sound totally implausible to try and give us some information about the plot. It’s bad enough in soap operas where everything needs to be spoken, but in a book there’s no excuse for it when it can be done more subtly. “Give Neville our love”…”we can’t give a teacher love!” Very poor.

Also agree that I would have liked further development of Snape, as he is easily one of the most interesting characters in the story.

She couldn’t possibly have expanded on the wizard fascism or else people might get the implications.

If she made it clear that in her books WWII was a wizard duel and afterward the wizards changed everybody’s memories to make them think they’d been fighting a world war, and the necromancy got disguised as death camps, etc — too many people would be outraged.

According to the collective memory, _Stig of the Dump_ is by Clive King.

Another obvious choice for slightly older kids is _A Wizard of Earthsea_. For more recent books, try _Sabriel_ by Garth Nix, though perhaps that would be best for junior high.

20:

I guess that is a logical extension of what she was doing with Grindelwald. I hadn’t even thought that she might be hinting at that.

But I think references to “wizard fascism” were just about how she treated Voldemort’s takeover of the Ministry in the book’s present.

My biggest disappointment was that Snape turned out to be a good guy after all. The series would have been much more interesting if Dumbledore’s greatest strength–his unwavering trust in outcasts (Hagrid, Lupin, etc.)–had also led to his death.

I agree with nearly all the criticisms leveled here, too. But still a damn good read.

Mrs Weasley cannot plausibly be turned into Ripley from Aliens just because everyone hates Bellatrix.

You have something against faceted characters? A lot of people in the real world have violent pasts and training in combat and don’t make a big deal out of it. Why can’t a character you know very little about develop another side to her? Would it help if there were a long backstory explaining her past as a hired killer? Do you need a Kill Bill flashback or a lot of heavy suggestion a la A Hisory of Violence?

Mrs Weasley cannot plausibly be turned into Ripley from Aliens just because everyone hates Bellatrix.

Isn’t the power of a mother’s love a pretty strong theme of this series?

Thanks, all, for the suggestions. I’d thought of Earthsea too, but I seem to remember it requiring a little more concentration than even my attentive 6 y.o. can muster.

I’ve been bowlderizing passages of HP, but it’s amusing to see what doesn’t scare a child. The Dementor’s Kiss she found hilarious. She actually thinks that Rowling made the Dementors kiss their victims as some kind of tension-reducing comic relief for the children reading the book.

on children’s books: Dianna Wynne Jones’s Charmed Life and the other Chrestomanci books make much more clever use of the imaginative possibilities of magic than Rowling’s. Not as dark as Earthsea, probably about right to read to a six year old.

Agreed, there are a lot of flaws and general clunkiness.

But it was still a darn good read

I read it straight through one sitting, and I don’t know anyone who stopped part-way through (which makes it better than 4, 5 and 6)

Tom Ames: would give another vote for PRYDAIN series. Easier than some of the other suggestions, but with great story and strong adult theme too.

Tom Ames — you might check out

1) Monica Furlong’s 2 book-length stories of vaguely wiccan magic in a vaguely early Celtic context (“Wise Child” and “Juniper” and sadly, no others) and

2)Tamora Pierce, who writes tales of magical creatures and people with odd/magical powers. She creates engaging and powerful heroines but also interesting male characters, and she is amazingly prolific. When she did a reading at our local Barnes and Noble (my daughter was 12 or 13 at the time), the place was mobbed. I haven’t kept up these last few years, but she tended to create 1 4-book series after another, sometimes with a minor character from 1 series becoming a major one in another. 6 might not be too young…see what you think.

What about Terry Pratchett? OK, I know they’re ‘humorous’, but they’ve got a better, more consistently humanist morality than HP, Tolkien, etc etc etc. Granny Weatherwax is a better example of the responsible use of magic than Gandalf will ever be.

My daughter also suggests Sherwood Smith, especially “Crown Duel.” Whereas Pierce’s stories do have sometimes show the characters actually falling in love and having relationships and stuff (nothing that I find remotely objectionable, but standards, like tastes, do differ…), she says Sherwood Smith doesn’t even have that whiff of a potential objection re appropriateness for a 6 year old.

Anyhow, she won’t be 6 forever, and by all indications she’ll still be wanting things to read……

I loved the Bellatrix-Mrs. Weasley duel all the more for its tortured cheesiness. Now, after all the threats & harm her family has suffered, now her character pulls a second dimension out of thin air? And did Bellatrix have to take on 3 girl students so the men had someone to fight? (You can say a lot about those Death Eaters, but apparently their chivalry isn’t dead) But the ideal of Victorian maternal femininity kicking the ass of the only sexualized female character in the series (pubescent snogging doesn’t count – but, seriously, can anyone remember any other reference in the book to a heaving bosom?) – priceless!

Should I conclude that Voldemort’s evil schemes crashed to the ground because the boys had all been grabbing each others’ wands?