Since the last book didn’t exactly leave off at a point of great hope and joyful rejoicing, I expect I’m in for more darkness with Book 6. I’ve given myself a bit of a break between finishing the last book and starting this one, a trick that you might want to recommend to young readers. While they may be desperate to get on with the story, it might be good for everyone’s mood and emotional well-being if some happier, fluffier books were enjoyed in between installments of ‘Harry Potter’. Especially because you can’t very well promise that this one will end more cheerfully than the last. (It doesn’t, I’m afraid).
Luckily, the first 11 chapters are not terribly ominous. Certainly the return of Voldemort isn’t a good thing, and Mrs. Weasley’s clock is constantly telling her that all of her family members are in mortal peril, but the tone is much lighter. There are Quidditch tryouts and twittering girls mooning over famous Harry, “the Chosen One”. A new teacher has made a pet of him. Things are officially not horrible. Then there’s a brief “student gets cursed” interlude, as well as some foreshadowy flashbacks in which we learn that Tom Riddle (aka Lord Voldemort) was always a pretty nasty, twisted kid. But on the whole, there’s a lot more smooching and teenagers having feelings than you would expect (a whole different can of worms in terms of content).
But when things get dark, and at the end, they do get dark, it is a level of horror that most young readers are unprepared for. During the course of the book, Harry learns he will have to be the one to face Voldemort in the end. I don’t expect this to come as a shock to anyone, but the book really does make it clear what a heavy burden this is for Harry. The journey to destroy Voldemort begins towards the end of this book as Dumbledore takes Harry to find a Horacrux. This is a pretty horrible scene, in which Harry must continue to give Dumbledore poison even though he knows it could kill him. Then a whole lot of corpses come to life. These include dead women and children. They are Inferi, animated dead. The description is pretty scary. One picks him up and brings him into the water to drown. When they return to Hogwarts, a time that should be full of relief and celebration, things only get worse. In a turn that will surely upset younger readers
Harry does not believe it at first, and I don’t think readers will either. I think they’ll be looking for a way out, for it to somehow not be true. As it becomes clear that it is very much real and will not be undone, it will be very hard for some readers to process.I do have to say that despite all of the death and loss, this book in particular shows a lot of grieving and processing of loss, done very transparently, which is always good at helping children understand. Harry also thinks a lot about how he ended up in his current position.
What I cannot truly like is how truly disinterested and dismissive of school Harry and Ron are. They rely on Hermione (and yes, thank goodness a girl is smart here) but after this many books it really started to wear on me how very much they rely on cheating to get by. Harry in particular is also deceitful. It’s pretty alarming since he is held up as a hero and much of this aspect of his character is not really shown in a negative light, except by the endlessly nagging Hermione.
In terms of the demands placed on readers, as the series continues, there is more and more information for readers to process. It will be hard for many, especially younger readers, to keep track of all of the characters. There are new ones introduced in each book, some only making brief (but significant) appearances during flashbacks or subplots (another thing that will be hard for some readers to keep track of). Also, the genre of fantasy can often be more difficult because of the world-building. Think of all of the many words that Rowling has invented solely for Harry Potter, like horacrux or legilimency or occulmency. Think of how much energy is needed to keep track of all of those words as well as trying to decode and define all of the standard difficult words that readers could at least look up in a dictionary. It is a lot to take in.
Age Recommendation: Sixth grade and up. Did you see the size of that Sex, Nudity, Dating category below? Whew. As I mentioned earlier boys and girls are noticing each other at Hogwarts. And by noticing each other I mean dating and making out a lot, publicly. With tongues entangled and bodies pressed against each other. Yikes. I’ve had third graders tell me they were uncomfortable with a boy and a girl holding hands in a book. I’m not sure they’d like to be treated to a page where Ron Weasley is into some heavy smooching. But more alarming is the tale of Tom Riddle and the witch Merope who uses a love potion to trick him into loving her and then a less magical trick – lying about being pregnant – to get him to marry her. Of course all of this backfires when he does leave her when she actually is pregnant. Now, all of that is pretty tame by a lot of teen standards, but for elementary school students, it’s a different matter. Especially because at one point, Merope is called a slut. Definitely not a word for younger readers. The scariness factor doesn’t increase much from Book 5, in fact, the overall tone of this is much lighter (what with all the teenage angst) but the sadness of the ending is a firm counterbalance to all that precedes it.
Sex, Nudity, Dating – Dementors are “breeding”. A girl kisses a boys cheeks leaving them burning. There are daydream potions and love potions. A girl is going out with someone. A boy rests his head in a girl’s lap. A girl gets called “darling”. There is talk about how a girl is “hankering” after a boy and watches to see him pass. A family has a habit of marrying their own cousins. Someone cherishes a “secret, burning passion.” A woman tricks a man into marrying her by saying she is pregnant (she is not). Later her husband leaves her while she is pregnant. Ron tries to catch the attention of a curvy barmaid. It seems two of the main characters are romantically interested in each other. A couple is “kissing fiercely as though glued together.” A girl runs down a list of who has snogged whom. A character imagines kissing another character. Another pair of characters are kissing, so closely that you can’t tell whose hands are whose. Girls wait under mistletoe hoping to kiss Harry. Someone accidentally consumes a love potion intended for someone else. Harry kisses someone and begins dating someone. Many characters date. There is talk of people falling in love and getting married (luckily these characters aren’t students).
Profanity – “hell,” Boys use a rude hand gesture. “damn,” “good lord,” students swear loudly, “slut,”
Death, Violence and Gore – A bridge collapses sending a dozen cars into a river. There are two “nasty” murders. References are made to deaths that occur in prior books. There is a threat of a mass Muggle killing. Something the Muggles believe to be a hurricane causes horrible injuries. A woman was killed in a room that was locked from the inside. A man attempts to strangle three people. A fox is killed. The person who killed it is disappointed it is not a person. A man’s hand looks blackened and shriveled as though his flesh has been burnt away. A man’s body is found in a shack. People’s lives are threatened. A store sells skulls. A woman’s husbands keep mysteriously dying. Someone stomps on someone else’s face causing a bloody nose. Gruesome pictures hang in a classroom. One shows a bloody mass. A man brandishes a short bloody knife. A girl is dragged by the neck. A snake is nailed to a door. A girl is throttled. A girl is taken out of class and told her mother is dead. A man is pinned against a wall by the throat. A person rises into the air, begins screaming and writhing. That person would have died had any skin come in contact with a cursed object. A child’s pet rabbit is hung from the rafters. Someone is accidentally punched in the mouth and bleeds. There are werewolves and some discussion about how they bite children and how they kill to eat. A man carries a knife. We learn that three people were murdered (this is a past murder that we have read about in a previous book in the series). A girl disapparates leaving her leg behind. This is painful, but fixable. A student twitches and chokes, poisoned. Someone’s skull is fractured in a Quidditch match. That person wants to kill the person that caused the injury. Two house elves brawl. People are framed for murder on multiple occasions. People vanish. A nine-year old is arrested for trying to kill his grandparents; people believe he was under a curse at the time. A five year old is attacked by werewolves and died before he could be saved. A giant spider dies. Spiders usually eat their dead. We read the details of Harry’s parents’ deaths yet again. There is talk of killing in order to split your soul into pieces. A character will be killed if he doesn’t do someone’s bidding. There is a duel, where one person attempts the Cruciatus Curse and another uses a curse unknown to him, but which causes the other person to bleed profusely. There are dementor attacks. Tom Riddle used to hurt people for the fun of it. In one case he brought two small children to a secluded place for the pleasure of terrorizing them. Dumbledore cuts a gash in his own arm to gain admittance to a room. There are dead people floating in a body of water. A man drinks something knowing it is likely a very dangerous poison. The poison makes the person beg to die and scream in anguish. Then a whole lot of corpses come to life. These include dead women and children. They are Inferi, animated dead. The description is pretty scary. One picks him up and brings him into the water to drown. The Dark Mark hangs over Hogwarts indicating a murder has taken place there. Blood drips from a man’s mouth, because he has bitten someone. He has “a taste for human flesh” The killing curse is used on a beloved character. The character is blasted into the air and fell over the castle battlements and out of sight. We later read the details of how the body lies, arms and legs at a strange angle. A character trips over two bodies lying facedown in a pool of blood. A house is set on fire with a dog trapped inside it. The Cruciatus curse is used against Harry. There’s a lot more random blood that I’m not quite covering. Razor sharp claws of a hippogryph attack someone. A sacrifice is made for no reason. Someone is attacked by a werewolf and left “a bit of a mess”. That character is rendered unrecognizable, so slashed as to appear grotesque. A random bad guy is killed by the Killing Curse (one from another bad guy that hit him inadvertently).
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – Men drink whiskey. People drink wine. Mead is served to a group that includes teenagers by a person in a position of power. An unnamed but likely alcoholic beverage is served from a decanter. A wizard conjures a bottle of gin and then is offered said gin. A woman drinks quite a bit of gin. There’s a reference to being under the influence of butterbeer, which is a beverage that students drink. Students can smell the odor of cooking sherry on a teacher, who is later described as speaking in a drunken titter. There is more drinking of mead. Eggnog is served. A woman in a painting drank too much. There is a painting of drunk monks. A professor offers a student his choice of butterbeer, wine or mead. Two teachers get drunk in the presence of a student. The student is in fact, pretending not to drink and refilling their cups. A teacher surrounded by sherry bottles. Her breath smells of it. The headmaster often goes out for a drink.
Frightening or Intense Things – There are corpses, dead bodies, that have been bewitched to do a dark wizard’s bidding. Two people visit a house where there is evidence of a great struggle including red stains on the wall. People are disappearing. Children are biten by werewolves, stolen from their parents and made to hate wizards. A very trusted person explains that he has tricked people into sharing confidences.
