fosters.com: THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY POTTER, HE’S ALL GROWN UP

It’s a little-kid rite of passage: lugging Harry Potter to and fro, begging for toy wands and Hogwarts birthday parties. But the boy wizard is nearly grown, and the love of magic he inspires in the very young is now tinged with pure evil, dripping with teen hormones.

Parents revel in their kindergartners and first-graders taking on the big books, their rousing playground games of Quidditch on improvised brooms and trick-or-treating with big round glasses and greasepaint thunderbolt scars.

Enthusiastic young readers and healthy imaginations? Of course, but potentially frightening images deep into the book and movie franchise, including the latest movie blockbuster “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” have parents trying to decide when ”if ever” to pull the plug.

How young is too young now that bite-sized fans can’t mature with Harry as his first wave of admirers did, dressed as their favorite characters as they waited giddily outside bookstores and movie theaters year after year for J.K. Rowling and Hollywood to dole out Potter along a growing-up timeline they all shared?

Today, the life-and-death saga is out there in full in libraries and bookstores, on DVD and in the homes of friends, with the last book released in a frenzy in 2007. And the story is there in the love of many parents, too, including some who note that movie No. 6 was released last week with a PG rating, unlike the previous two marked PG-13.

“As a librarian, the issue of young children and Harry Potter is a constant concern,” said Paula Laurita in Athens, Ala. “Rowling intended for the first book to be for children 9 and 10 years old. Naturally, as Harry aged so did the plots. In reality, books six and seven are young adult literature, not juvenile literature.”

Complete article here.

(thanks gigi)

I can see how a young child could be scared by some of the people and issues in the HP books. I guess it would be difficult to decide which of the HP books are safe for kids under 10 and which are not.

What do you think? Have your kids read all the Harry Potter books?