Word: magics
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DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK-ARTS TEACHER: Remus Lupin, a sympathetic and skillful wizard with a magic--er, tragic flaw...
That is at least a place to start in trying to understand why Rowling's books are the most popular children's series ever written. It is hard not to believe in magic when you consider what she has done. Through her books, she speaks to kids in Milan and Morocco and Minnesota, and those conversations too are somehow private, even though they are conducted in 200 countries, in 55 languages, in Braille, in 200 million volumes. Children buy her books with their own money. They wear out flashlights reading them after lights-out. Kids with a fear...
...leave the room every time the teacher read aloud from Harry Potter. But even that ruckus has calmed down or come to stand for a much larger conversation about what should shape the moral life of children. "I think any unusual focus on things like magic and witchcraft is a bad idea," says Charles J. Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, "but these things can also be a natural part of storytelling with children. So I think the Potter argument is really about bigger and deeper battles going on all over the culture about our national character...
...Monroe Elementary in Des Moines, Iowa. "But it's not Captain Underpants either." Beyond their gratitude at anything that gets kids to read, parents and teachers appreciate how Rowling doesn't pander or patronize. "Generally adults in children's literature are horrible or incompetent," observes Debbie Mitchell of the Magic Tree Book Store in Oak Park, Ill., while Rowling shows adults being wise and fair and, in the gamekeeper Hagrid, the best friend imaginable. Her tone can also grow dark and Grimm in ways that many contemporary children's fantasies don't. "Children's psyches are a lot more sophisticated...
Rowling creates a bridge for kids to cross from her magical world to their own, built out of rules and constraints that both share. The very existence of Hogwarts School, the training academy for young wizards, is a testament to the reality that learning still takes time and patience. There's no spell that fills one's head with knowledge; the best Hermione can manage in Book 3 is the Time Turner, to give her more hours to study. The Weasleys, Ron's family, are still poor--and any world in which a family as hardworking, loving and generous...