Harry Potter the doom and gloom

So Umaima called up at my place today. Naqiyah being with me last 2-3 days. She had ticks for Harry Potter - The order of Phoenix 3D. Wanted Naqiyah to go with her. Naqiyah said she didn't want to go, and being in one of her pertinacious moods stuck to her guns. Umaima asked me to try and tell her the story and see if she'd get interested to watch the flick.




I started to tell Naqiyah about Harry Potter, the poster child for children's books and beloved of many, when I said to myself. Harry Potter is not for Naqiyah. I was surprised at this assertion. Why should the very mascot of for the Children tales not be for a child I asked. But seems I was also in stubborn mood, and put myself down with ~ morbid tale dealing with death, prejudices and guilt.



Now I knew I had a point. Harry potter's tale is tale of death of his parents and Harry's guilt ( at having been maybe the reason for the same), prejudice held against him by likes of Snape, Rita Skeeter, Umbridge etc etc. List is endless. Starting with cruel treatment by Uncle's family at the very start, all the books have death and darkness as central theme. As the series evolves, it just gets worse and worse.



The books do star children and have them as central character. This and the fact that the language is lucid, the tale is fantastic and magical, seems to have deluded many into mislabeling the series as children's tales!



I disagree strongly. Maybe for teenagers and above these books may be interesting. Yes indeed the magical implements and concept of flying broomsticks, magic wands, giants and dragons etc are fascinating to even younger lot. But on the whole, I've read much much better children's books ( so to say appropriate for children) then these. Same way as Cinderella was a tale about stepmother and cruel sisters.. and at its time may have been appropriate and ringa ringa roses is poem about kids falling down from small pox, and almost all nursery rhymes of Victorian era have similar dark themes .. I believe we are a little more civilized now, and children don't need desensitization towards hurt, cruelty and bad behavior.



Last Airbender comes to mind, just about now. Yes it has its part of violence, but atleast Avatar the boy is told by spirits ' It is not your role to hurt others - avatar is for all and should protect all' and the underlying theme of the movie is that he sets out to win 'hearts and minds'. As tongue in cheek and cynical it may be (referring to US hearts and mind campaign in Iraq and Afghanistan) however our younger generation deserves education on responsible application of power, and abhorrence of violence.