In these posts I hope to share a little about what I am reading with my two children. Not exactly a review but a look at a book we’ve read together and how it worked for us. For context, my daughters are currently 7- and 10-years old. They are both excellent independent readers but we choose to continue our family habit of reading a chapter together before bedtime.
I will admit that I resisted delving into the world of Harry Potter with my children. I was not yet a teenager when the first book was published and I recall a lot of conversation around whether or not the books were appropriate for Christians to read. That question was answered in my house when my grade 9 English teacher handed out a class set of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Back then though, we had to wait for the next book to be published before we could continue the series and I was 21 when the final book came out. That meant that I was fairly close in age to Harry and his friends as I read the series and I felt like that was a pretty good way to experience the world of magic and Hogwarts. I wanted that for my kids but it quickly became apparent that it wouldn’t easily be possible. Partially because the movies now exist but mostly because so many of my daughters’ friends have read at least some of the books. Instead, we chose to experience Harry Potter along with our girls and started reading them together.
We read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone together and Pearl and Rose loved it. It had been some time since either Peter or I had read the series and it was really fun to share it as a family. I think we all looked forward to family chapter book time. We moved on to the Chamber of Secrets but told the girls we would pause after that. Part of my hesitancy over reading the series with my kids was that as Harry ages, the content of the books becomes heavier and darker. The most obvious jump comes between books 3 and 4 but I feel there’s a jump between books 2 and 3 with the introduction of the dementors and the more complex ending.
For all that, my kids seemed to deal with it all fine. We watched the movie once we finished the book and I think the dementors were scarier on screen than when being read aloud by their mom. Pearl and Rose liked reading about the Knight Bus and the visits to Hogsmeade – I think they like the glimpse of the wider wizarding world.
There’s a reason that Harry Potter became such a phenomenon and there’s a reason that my kids begged me to read a little more every evening. These books are fun. They’re exciting and funny and the characters are delightful to follow along with as they grow. Pearl and Rose are fully engaged in this fictional magical world and the characters show up in their play a lot. Rose in particular can’t seem to get enough, although I think this is at least partially because her friend group has a lot of Harry Potter fans in it.
We’re going to take another break from Harry Potter before we move on to #4. I’m not sure yet when we’ll read it. Pearl is probably pretty close to the right age but Rose seems a little young yet. I’d love to hear what others’ experiences are, either with reading the series themselves or sharing them with their kids!
Karissa Reads Books 
I was completely unaware of these books when they came out, yet I think you and I are the same age. Why did no one around me read or talk about them, even at school?? I read the first one in college when an aunt told me I just had to. I wasn’t impressed because I had recently finished a devastating Mercedes Lackey fantasy series that felt very Harry Potter, only for older, more emo teens (and was published first, in the 80s).
That’s funny, I wonder how you missed them? I remember there being a LOT of discussion in church circles around whether or not it was ok for Christians to read them. I was initially not allowed and then in grade 9, my English teacher assigned us the first book to read. And then from there I remember growing excitement when each new book was released. I was working at a bookstore when the final book came out and it was a whole big event with a midnight release party. I think reading them as a teenager and then sort of growing up as the series came out and as he aged was really the best way. They’re fun to read with my kids but I wouldn’t pick them up on my own as an adult.
Wow, I hadn’t realized that you’ve been working in the book business for so long. I thought you started working at a bookstore after you became a mom, but it’s a pattern in your life. I don’t know, I literally knew zero people who were reading Harry Potter. 🤷🏼♀️ It was after I met Nick, I think, the Harry Potter came onto my radar. For example, he had to work the night the very last book was released, so I had to stand in line for him cuz I loved him (I still love him hahaha) to get the book at the midnight release.
Nope, I’ve been doing this a long time! I got my first bookstore job in 2006! That’s so cute that you got Nick his copy.
Yeah, but then he stayed up all night reading it and was totally worthless to me the next day 😅 This was before we knew he had ADHD.
The series was halfway through when I went to work at a small school for boys with behavioural difficulties who had been excluded from mainstream schooling. I don’t read children’s books normally so had ignored all the hoopla around Harry Potter until then. But the inspiring English teacher was using the books to try to get some of the boys interested in reading—despite being teenagers most of them were more or less entirely illiterate. The Harry Potter books worked like magic on them. The teacher started reading them aloud in class and then the few boys who could read got so interested that they read ahead on their own. And the boys couldn’t read were so jealous of the boys who could read that several of them actually buckled down and learned to read just so that they could read these books. I was so amazed at the impact that books had on the boys that I read them myself and I must admit I thought they were magic too! But for me they will always represent how a really thrilling story can tempt a reluctant reader. For that JKR deserves all the praise in the world!
That’s lovely! What a reminder of what a good story can do.