This way to the stars

Harry Potter: Children's Books No More

I went to this blog to admire my handiwork on the layout when I realized that I haven't posted a review for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Though I can definitely say that this sixth installment of the phenomenally popular series is darker than its predecessors owing to the maturity of the protagonist/title character, it's too mature and PG-13 for comfort.

I agree that the plot has to get darker and more complex (yes, once again an important character is murdered by someone whose loyalties seem to be ambiguous). I agree that Harry Potter has to have some kind of a love life even though he's marked as a future murderer/victim; I mean, I would have been surprised not to find anything on the typical adolescent fling in a book about sixteen-year-olds. In fact, I actually liked the interesting little emotional skirmishes (case in point: Ron and Hermione). The numerous kissing - or snogging - scenes were overdone and hilarious, at least, in my point of view.

But would the parents of the young Harry Potter groupies be as amused when their kids start asking them what slut means? Or maybe, what exactly Ron and Lavender were doing as they were thrashing around like a pair of eels all over the place? I'll admit, it's never too early to make kids aware of the birds and the bees, but eels??? Come on, people: I know that things can get wild when adolescent hormones surge, but Rowling writes as if her characters had an overdose of steroids. I wouldn't be surprised if (as I found on one website whose URL I can't remember), Harry Potter would eventually bed one of his hero-worshipping groupies in Book Seven.

One thing is for sure: what with its increasingly darker, wilder, gloomier, and death-filled content, Harry Potter is fast evolving from the long-ago time when it was confined to the Children's Section at the back of the bookstore, and some of its most notable content were quirky long-bearded Headmasters and weird Every Flavor Beans. No longer is its audience confined to eager kiddies obsessed (as we all once were) with magic and fanciful unicorns; in fact, the series seems to age and mature with the children with whom the series was first introduced once upon a time. It could even become an adult-worthy classic if Book Seven was dealt with in an intimate yet grand and epic scale worthy of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

Actually, I can't help feeling resentful at Rowling, because in spite of the questionable merits of Book Six (I still think that Books Three and Five were so much better), I immediately hankered after Book Seven upon reading the last line of the damn book.

I sure do hope that Book Seven has no more snogging than is absolutely necessary.

posted by steph @ 7:44 PM