Are the later Harry Potter books too dark for a seven year old?

[emkana]

And does it make a difference when they are read to her, not read by herself?

[emkana]

Hmmm

dh and dd1 are currently reading POA and she doesn't seem too frightened yet.

Dh is loving HP and I'm not sure if he'll take kindly to the suggestion to stop reading them after POA...(I know he could read them by himself and let dd wait, but he loves sharing the experience with dd)

[OneHandedTypist]

Didn't JKR mean them to be read by children the same age as HP in the books? Meaning child should be 10 to read the first one, 11 to read the 2nd one, etc.? I really don't want DS starting them until he's 10, anyway. Movies are quite toned down by comparison, I reckon.

[emkana]

REally? I kind of thought that dd could reread them herself when she's a bit older.

I would not contempate letting dd watch the films.

[bookwormmum]

First two books are ok but they're definitely darker as they go on. Besides how many 7-yrs could handle a book that big?

I had to lie down to read some of them as they made my arms ache holding them up .

[Miggsie]

...depends how your daughter can cope with:
Dumbledore being killed
People being tortured
Harry being tortured by Umbridge
Hermione being tortured by Voldemort
Fred getting an ear blasted off
George being killed
Dobby is killed saving Harry
Harry digs Dobby's grave
Hedwig is killed by accident
Moody is killed by accident
They are betrayed by one of their friends
Pettigrew cuts off his own hand to resurrect Voldemort
Bill becoming infected with a werewolf
Tonks and Lupin getting killed
Harry playing dead and his dead body being paraded through a wood
Bellatrix talking about torturing people and enjoying it
Luna being locked up and chained to a wall
Snape's memories of school and the dark secrets

etc etc etc

I would say YES they are too dark if DD is attached to characters at that stage.
She won't get the relationship undercurrents between Snape and Harry's mother
She won't get the splitting your soul in pieces thing of Voldemort

If you read them you can explain bits as she might get agitated.
I certainly found the half blood prince and deathly hallows disturbing
Oh, and Dobby dies too and I cried at that bit and I'm well over the hill.

Read them yourself and decide.
I am saving Harry Potter for DD being 8/9 at least.

[OneHandedTypist]

Partly depends on the child, of course. My DC can't handle stuff like Dr. Who or Robin Hood (the tv shows). Way too graphic/scarey/suspenseful. Obviously a lot of children age 6+ are huge Dr. Who fans, and I guess can take it fine.
But I'm sure I read that JKR meant chldren the same age as HP in the books to be target audience for each book, that's why they get darker and darker and more violent as series progressed.

[Alambil]

I am 25 and got nightmares reading HP!!! (but I am a chicken)

[lizziemun]

I would say yes.

But if you think about it, she started to write them for children of about 10 - 11yrs and finished 10 years later so they are written for late teens.

[Threadworm]

Depends entirely on the child. My two were fine with them at that age.

Interestingly, the first really scary thing in the books is the Dementors, and JK Rowling (I normally despise her writing but I thought this bit was neat) gives her readers a device for coping with them in the book in which they first occur. It's the Ridiculous Spell (I think that's what it's called) where you have to combat your greatest fear by imagining it in a ridiculous and humiliating position. This not only takes the sting out of the Dementors, it also gives children a strategy for dealing with real-life fears.

[oxocube]

I wouldn't have thought a 7 year old would understand the later HP books. My dd has just listened to then on cd (she is 10 and found them too difficult to read herself but loved the Stephen Fry disks). She found them scary but 'exciting scary' IYSWIM but I think she understood them at a very different level to her 12 yr old brother. I would say that at 7, much of the story would go over the child's head.

[DumbledoresGirl]

Yes far too dark and also cover too many issues beyond the understanding of a 7 yo IMO. My son was 10 when he read book 5 - I don't think he appreciated it iyswim.

[Boredveryverybored]

I think it definitely depends on the child. My dd is 7 next week and is now reading poa herself after having read the others. She is having no problems with it, is really enjoying it actually.
You need to judge what you think your child can deal with really.

[DumbledoresGirl]

Threadworm, sorry, the ridikulus spell is for boggarts. You are thinking it is for dementors because when Harry sees a boggart, he sees a dementor (boggarts assume the shape of the thing you fear the most).

Sorry to be a pedant. What can you expect with my name?

[DumbledoresGirl]

The tale doesn't IMO get really dark until the end of book 4 anyway, so books 1-3 are fine for children.

[dejags]

Agree that it depends on the child. DS loves HP, it doesn't frighten him at all. But he has always been a "grown up" child.

He sometimes sneaks off and reads a few pages of the last book without DH (who normally reads to him) and this causes no end of trouble.

[mamalocco]

DD1 read the first two when she was 7, got part way through the third book and decided it was abit too scary and would finish it when she turned 8!

Wouldn't have chosen them as reading material (she kept nagging), many other good books out there. Certainly wouldn't want her reading past the third book for a couple more years.

[Threadworm]

But it still works as an anti-terror device for the readers.

[Madlentileater]

I would think they ARE too dark, myself, but then I have noticed that sometimes things in kids books resonate differently with adults than with children, because adults have a wider frame of reference. For example the dementors (to me) suggest clinical, suicidal depression...they describe something that really happens, and (one would hope) children have no conception of that. In Northern Lights, the prison camp where children get experimented on reminded me of concentration camps, again something real, but my kids - who were older than yours- seemed to take it in their stride. On the other hand, the overall messages in both HP and Northern Lights, are, in the end, positive- very clearly so in HP, and maybe that's what's important.

[duber]

I would agree. The first two are probably fine, but after that they get darker and darker.

[cory]

It absolutely depends on the personality of the child and what upsets them personally. It's all about knowing your child.

When ds watched the Harry Potter films for the first time, he was totally unworried by dementors, Voldemort etc. The bit that upset him was when the Dursleys were unkind to Harry. The rest he could see was just fantasy, but this was too much reality. And he has always been more frightened by unkindness than by anything else.

My dd bullied me into reading her the Lord of the Rings at age 6 and was able to follow the plot; we had several interesting discussions about the author's intentions. She was not at all freaked out by the scary bits, but there were more realistic books (supposedly suitable for her age range) that she couldn't deal with at all. Books that seemed totally innocuous to her teachers, but for some reason worried her.