Mabfan's Musings

Nice post on Harry Potter! My wife, who teaches kindergarten, and I are discussing the issues you raised right now.

I suspect a lot of parents are pondering the issues; I suspect I'm not the first or the last word on the subject.

This comes at a really appropriate time for me! We've been talking a lot with my son's therapist lately about the difficulties of raising bright kids, because their brains are capable of understanding and evolving thoughts they don't have the emotional capacity to handle. We have to be really careful with him and books, because he is very capable of reading books that will leave him upset and stressed for weeks to come. It's a strange balancing act, and I'm not at all sure how we'll handle things like Harry Potter, except that we'll have to try to read a lot of them along with him, to help him handle the text and themes on an emotional level.

Both my kids bogged down at book 4 or 5, and I've heard from other moms that this is not uncommon. I suspect they'll pick them up at some point and try again; meanwhile, I explained that the later books are for older kids anyway.