A PARENT’S GUIDE TO HARRY POTTER

Kate Reading’s academic tone is a great match for this thoroughly researched book on how Harry Potter can improve your child’s morality. With her warm confidence evident in every measured sentence, Reading expresses the author’s point, aimed at J.K. Rowling’s Christian critics, that the Harry Potter novels are not different from other fairy tales in their portrayal of magic, evil, and other controversial subject matter. The author then carefully brings in psychologists like Piaget and the children’s morality expert Lawrence Kohlberg to support the lessons she finds in Rowling’s powerful narratives. These include lessons on friendship, self-sacrifice, temptations, courage, love, fears, protecting the innocent, dealing with injustice, class snobbery, international cooperation, tyranny, and terrorism—all relevant issues in today’s fragmented moral climate. T.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 07]