Is harry potter good book for kids?

[JuanTroyer]

Hi, I'm just wondering if Harry Potter is a good start to be read by kids? Or not. Thank you.

Sorry to derail the thread - about HP - yes of course they are brilliant brilliant books for children but not all children will take to them. My two must be very unusual as they weren’t interested until year 5/6 and DS still hasn’t got through them all as he found the 5th one really slow. DD was hooked though.

and how to tell stalagmite and stalactite apart ("Stalactites must hold tight to the roof and stalagmites might join them one day if they grow tall enough)

Omg yes this really stuck in my head. Glad I'm not the only one.

I also enjoyed her boarding school series. But looking back, Daryl Rivers was an awful person.

My 7 year old has read book 1 and 2, numerous times now because I haven't brought book 3 yet as I'm not sure if it's suitable. I'm thinking I should of waited until she was a little older.

@Snoopsnoggysnog
I agree with you up to a point.
The Five Find Outers main characters are Fatty and Bets with Ern when he's there.

But the other characters are still 3-D characters. You wouldn't confuse Daisy, Larry and Pip. They are distinct, just not as strong characters. And if they weren't there, then the series would be missing something. Larry has the jostling to be leader-after all he's the oldest of them and was leader before Fatty came. He's often the one to try and bring Fatty down from boasting, but at the same time recognises that Fatty is a better leader and better at detection.
Daisy is motherly, but very practical and thinks quickly, often asking leading questions.
Pip feels his responsibility for Bets much more than Larry does for Daisy-perhaps very naturally as Larry and Daisy are more similar in age. But also they have the strictest parents so perhaps he's a bit forced by that, which may also add into him being a little more worried at Fatty's wilder plans. He's keen to please and show his worth in a way Larry isn't.

What age is your child?
We started reading the first one to my eldest when he was not long 5 and it was too early - stopped after the first couple of chapters when he just wasn't into it rough to enjoy it. Then when he was about to turn 6 we got the Jim Kay illustrated version and read that to him and he LOVED it. The illustrations really helped draw him in and have the patience to listen til the 'exciting' bits happened. We subsequently read the next 2 to him over following months, then started on the 4th, not realising it gets quite a bit darker straight from chapter 1, and so we paused as he was a bit scared. However after a few months (he was 7 by this time) he really wanted to come back to it and so we read it to him, but he started reading on himself and finished it, probably reading half of it by himself. He's always been a good reader, but intimidated by longer books and this gave him huge confidence that he could read bigger books 🥰.

We said we would wait for the illustrated version of book 5 to come out before we'd get it, but it was massively delayed, so he's now 8.5 and he's just recently got book 5 (a few weeks ago) and DH started reading it to him and then suddenly it's all DS does in his spare have his nose in it every waking moment and he finished it at about 10:30pm the other night absolutely bouncing with excitement to tell me all about it. We are getting him the 6th one any day.

So, in my opinion, they are marvellous books. They have turned my good but sometimes reluctant reader into someone who is excited by books and transported into the magical world. He's also read the hobbit since reading book 4, so it's been a gateway book for him as a PP said. I do think it's important to be the right age/stage for them - as 5 was clearly too young for my DS, but 7/8 is perfect.

They're classics and will still be read in hundreds of years.

and how to tell stalagmite and stalactite apart ("Stalactites must hold tight to the roof and stalagmites might join them one day if they grow tall enough)

Omg yes this really stuck in my head. Glad I'm not the only one.

I too remember that!

There was such a wonderful range of characters in the Wishing Chair and Faraway Tree books - pixies, elves, brownies, wizards, talking animals, the Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot, and so on. And the Faraway Tree children weren't middle class.

The Adventure series was my favourite of her series for older children. The four children were very well characterised - you'd never confuse Dinah with Lucy-Ann. And although it's not explicitly stated, the plot of Valley of Adventure was based on RL events in WW2.

And we don't know what Mrs Mannering did, but she was a single working mother who must have had quite a high powered job, and sometimes had problems finding childcare in the school holidays. Quite modern, really.

The original illustrations were great, too. I don't know who illustrated the Faraway Tree books, but he/she really captured the characters and added to the reading experience. And Stuart Tresilian's illustrations for the Adventure books similarly.

@LouisRenault

The Adventure series was my favourite of her series for older children.

Mine too 🙂

I really want to read them in the original again now 😅

I think for Harry Potter that 7/8 is fine for the first few, but I'd think 11+ is maybe better for 5/6/7. Of course it's different now they're all available — I had to wait for them to come out!

(On Enid Blyton, I loved the green goblin books with Feefo, Tuppeny and Jinks and the cat that purred pearls. She was very very good at magical worlds.)

I adored Enid blyton books as a child. I still do tbh. The children of willow farm and six cousins at mistletoe farm were my favourites. There was actually a huge amount of knowledge dropped into there - tammylan the wild man taught me a lot 😂
They certainly have their faults. But they fostered a love of reading in me that lead me to wider things.

Oh the adventure books were brilliant!! And I loved the Barney ones.

But yes, Harry Potter is brilliant! 😂

I started reading HP to DS when he was about 7.5. We have read books 1-6 over the past year but are holding off book 7 until Easter (as neither of us want the series to finish).

DS has subsequently read all the books independently (sometimes more than once) and nothing has captured his imagination quite like HP. Our rules are no films until he's read the books, and we talk about any stuff he doesn't understand.

I get irritated by JK Rowling's overuse of adjectives at times and the occasional clunky sentence when reading aloud but frankly they are so so much better than loads of other children's books out there.

We have moved on to Percy Jackson and the Magisterium series ..

Our whole family of all ages devoured the Harry Potter books. Even the non readers. Massive thumbs up from me.

[quote Ionlydomassiveones]@MargaretThursday - I would also add that she gave entire generations of working class children a love of reading which probably partly compensated for the poor 70s state education at school.[/quote]
Absolutely this.
Actually I had an accident which caused me to have to relearn certain skills again, one of which was being able to concentrate on reading. JK Rowling's books helped me develop that skill again whilst also going through a bereavement.

@Bollix

Enid Blyton books were fun for me (a middle class child of the 60s/70s who identified with the characters) but some books have not aged well for obvious reasons 😬

I love the Malory Towers books but having reread them along with dd I was shocked at how nasty all the girls are! I don’t remember thinking Gwen was being bullied when I was a kid but ad an adult I thought Jesus no wonder Gwen’s so unpleasant when she’s treated as she is!

Anyway maybe try the first one? Asking ‘is Harry Potter good for kids’ is like saying ‘is The Secret History good for 24 year olds?’ It depends. Try a couple of chapters and see.

I will say if your child is too young they’ll miss a lot of the stuff though - I know one woman who raves on and on about how her son read all the Harry Potters at 8 but having had a conversation with him (since I love them) it appeared that he really didn’t understand much of the last few - didn’t really grasp a lot of the concepts or plot, more just understood the actual words.

Great book series!

@Kanaloa

I will say if your child is too young they’ll miss a lot of the stuff though - I know one woman who raves on and on about how her son read all the Harry Potters at 8 but having had a conversation with him (since I love them) it appeared that he really didn’t understand much of the last few - didn’t really grasp a lot of the concepts or plot, more just understood the actual words.

Agree with this - they get more advanced as the go on - I'd say 10 is the ideal age to start them - one of my stepkids is starting them now age 10 (slow reader) but she's now on book 3! My other dd started them when she was 8 (advanced reader) and she's re reading them age 14!