Hope faith charity.

Hope for the hopeless and peace for those who have none.

Peace, love and blessings.

see Lord even in the the little things and you will be blessed.

god bless the souls of men and hold them safe

may grace and peace be yours

in love

Daniel notified me of your comment.

Yes, you are absolutely right, the question “What is appropriate for a certain age group?” is very important and will have to be decided for each child individually. That is not just true of Harry Potter, but also of the Bible. It can be argued that many passages and concepts in the Bible would be very harmful for the mental development of a child if taught too early – and yet we go to greath length to “target” our young children as early as possible with as much Bible as possible. Mostly rooted in fear, we INDOCTRINATE our children rather than ACCOMPANY them step-by-step in a healthy development.

When it comes to Harry Potter, I think they can be good books for someone’s teenage years. I re-read the first book again shortly after I finished the seventh book, and have since formed quite a positive view of Harry Potter. If you only read the first book, you might come away thinking that Harry Potter tries to justify the means by the end a little too much. Harry’s magic is at first set into motion when he is “upset and angry”, the toffee-nosed know-it-all Hermione turns likable by lying on Harry’s behalf, and one of Harry’s chief character traits is that of a rule breaker.

Aside from the point that novels – including juvenile ones – don’t have to portray their main characters as saints, the series has, in fact, turned out to be of great moral depth. Given Harry’s final moral choices at the end of Book VII, Book I can now be seen as the beginning of a “Bildungsroman.” That is, a Coming Of Age Story in which Harry goes through all the stages of childhood and adolescence, to finally arrive at moral, social, and psychological maturity.

If that is not an ideal way of making teenagers aware of their own journey to maturity, I don’t know what is.

But yes, there are certainly kids who read HP too early.

Of course there is also the issue of magic and witchcraft, but people who have a problem with HP because of that should have a problem with Fantasy literature in general, not specifically HP.