Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Harry Potter

There is a Harry Potter cookbook that has recipes for some of the treats mentioned in the book. There is also the book about the animals... Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them, I think it's called. You could have her come up with her own beasts/plants and draw them and come up with what their magical properties are, etc.

DD8.5 has read numbers 1 and 2. We will not allow her to read beyond that yet because she is super sensitive and will have great difficulty dealing with the scary/sad things that start happening in book 3. She has only seen the movie of book 1 and she is not interested in seeing the other ones because she liked the book so much better than the first movie she thinks they are a waste of time. (I'm sure this attitude will change with time.) Yes, some of her friends think she is weird because she hasn't read them all, but she rightfully blames me as the reason she hasn't and they seem to be ok with that.
It isn't easy to keep her from reading them all, but knowing how she will react to them it is worth it. We will probably let her read the next one this summer. So, my advice would be to see how she is doing with the plot and characters and how deeply she is getting into it before you let her read them all.

Butter (8) has loved Halloween and all things scary, supernatural and mysterious, as well as the color black since she was two. She mentioned that our dog and cat had died recently on the first day of school. Her first favorite movie was Nightmare before Christmas.
She didn't start reading HP books until we saw the last movie earlier this year. She's on The Half Blood Prince now...Previously she read Chronicles of Narnia (the whole series) starting at the end of first grade, Percy Jackson series in second grade and now HP. Well, actually, DH and I took turns reading HP aloud to Butter when she was in the womb, does that count? lol!
I would not say its "the norm" for a child so young to seem undisturbed by death, scary monsters, etc but that's just the way she's always been.
The Diva (almost 5), on the other hand, couldn't even watch The Princess Bride until she was 4, now suddenly, scary things don't bother her either, but she still isn't as "emo" as Butter, lol!

DS 5 was home sick and I thought okay maybe we could try it. He has always been sensitive and a fraidy cat but he has always been more comfortable with books as opposed to movies or TV for scary stuff. We read through the section about mr dursley going to work,the owls, dumbledore arriving, he loved it, then the first part about voldemort killing the potters and trying to kill Harry - forget it - lip quivering, way,way too scary. In retrospect, I knew it but I was swayed by how much he would like the rest of it!! So it will be awhile before I try again. It was sort of silly to rush, but i was focused on the orphan part as the scary part rather than the killing, so since he read Hugo Cabret and a bunch of other orphan books (annoying that it's always the vehicle) I thought it was okay, totally missing the evil killing part, sometimes I forget he's 5, oops

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DD, about to turn 6, could not have coped with any of them at the start of the year, when she wouldn't even look at a cartoon skeleton and would bust in to tears if one of us stood on an ant. But about 2 months ago she had suddenly moved past all that and we're now half way through the Half Blood Prince (the 6th one - we're all sharing the reading of them, which helps with explaining bits she's uncertain about). We've started each one on the premise that we'd stop if she was uncomfortable, but she's like a girl possessed. Can't get enough of them. We've watched the first 4 movies together, but she decided after watching the 4th one yesterday she preferred the books (yay - me too!)

But I do think that for this age there should be some supervision of it and an opportunity to ask questions - reading them together has been great for that and I'd have no qualms with her reading them to herself once we're done, but this first time through it just gives me peace of mind.

When DD was 6, she wanted to read HP, but I wouldn't let her. I knew she would love it so much more if she waited. At 7, she LOVED the books and I only let her read until the 5th book. I let her finish the rest at age 8. They are intense. I had a rule. She could see the movie only AFTER she read the book. That way, she knew what was coming and was less likely to scare.
She is 9 now and still hasn't found a series she has enjoyed so much. The problem with HP is that not many other books compare and it is hard to find another series. I also think there is some loyalty to the books. Like, moving to another series suggests she is over HP, which she is not.

DS6 read the first Harry Potter book after I bought it for him, but didn't really love it, so I didn't get the next one. I thumbed through one of the later books at a later date, and formed a generally low opinion of the writing. DS6, DW and I all liked the first movies, but not the last several so much, as we felt the image and animation richness and quality went up while the quality of the plots went down. There was a deal recently for all the HP movies on Blu Ray for $40+ shipped, which we skipped. FWIW we also found the Percy Jackson movie a bit silly, so we won't be buying those books, although I certainly won't keep him from them if he checks them out from the library.

These things are of course highly individual, and based in large part on emotional maturity. DS6 reads about and watches way bloodier and emotionally challenging stuff than Harry Potter all the time. He's full up on books for a while (currently going through some Stanislaw Lem and assorted other stuff), but for Christmas we did buy him "WW II in HD" and "The Universe" on blu ray. I know in advance that the bloodthirsty kid won't bat an eye at any part of the former, but that he may spend some sleepless nights worrying about the heat death of the universe.

OP, my view on reading level is along the lines of the following quote. I don't care a whit about tested reading levels, or what an educator feels is the right readiness or challenge level for my children; I think the whole idea of keeping things from children above their perceived academic comfort level is hogwash, and can be harmful to a highly gifted child. DS6 has shown the tendency to develop his own reading skill to handle whatever he's interested in at the time, and I don't ever hold him back on the basis of perceived reading level. You might consider making reading a more active process for your daughter by asking her to narrate to you what she's just read, ask her to define any new vocabulary from context, etc.

"Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him." - Maya Angelou

The concept of Zone of Proximal Development holds that students will learn best from books where they recognize about 90% of the words. Gifted students usually find that they recognize a higher percentage in what they choose to read, and they can be pretty lazy about tackling unfamiliar vocabulary. So I would say if they read a couple of paragraphs aloud and only stumble over a couple of words, and they enjoy reading it, they should be fine.

We never had any concerns for the scarier bits of HP for DD6, because she's fearless. At 4 she once picked up my book on the JFK assassination, flipped it open to the pictures, and demanded to know what they showed. I started explaining, and she became FASCINATED. We've had several conversations about the assassination since. Every so often she still picks up the book and peppers me with more questions. If she's not frightened by a true historical event, I'm not worried about fiction.

Few things in life frustrate her more than being too small to ride a roller coaster. But at the same time, she's very conscious about safety. For example, she wanted to know why she sits in the middle of the back seat, and I explained why it's the safest place in the car in case of an accident. She took that information and advanced it another level, because she independently decided to start wearing her bicycle helmet on car rides. DW had to discourage this behavior, because people in parking lots were noticing and giving DW dirty looks for being a psycho, overbearing mom.

Anyway, I'd say the worst thing in the whole series is the death of Dumbledore. DD6 has already seen it happen in the movie, and that moment clearly affected DW and I more than it did DD.

The writing quality is meh, I agree. But I'd say the plot qualities actually improve in the later books (4 and up), hitting the pinnacle in 6. Unfortunately, that's also the most completely awful movie of the series. As the plots get deeper and more intricate in the books, the movies end up leaving a lot more on the cutting room floor, because movie studios assume you can't sit still for more than 3 hours. They fixed that by doing the last book over two movies, but they really should have given the sixth book that same treatment.