DS8 routinely reads much higher level stuff but I too was worried about the emotional content. As typical with him, he glossed over uncomfortable emotional content when reading. So we actually had him watch the movie after reading each book. It was the movie that made him aware of the depth of feeling because he couldn't avoid it or read it faster or whatever else he was doing. He also tends to like the dark side, which sometimes concerns us, like preferring the emperor and darth vader than Luke and Han in Star Wars. Same thing here, he was very interested in voldemort and we really had to explain how evil he really was. DS was too used to cartoon or kid evil, and this really isn't that so we probably pushed a bit more than was comfortable for him. He read the whole series. And saw all the movies. And he is pretty sensitive, he saw his first movie in the theater just last year because of it. But we wouldn't have been able to stop him at book 3, not reading the whole series would have been worse than exposing him to the stuff. Ut we definitely waited until now, he could have read it earlier but it wouldn't have been good for him to do so. He explained to me at 5 that it was ok if the parents were dead before a book starts (all kid lit seems to have dead parents) but he had trouble when characters were killed in the middle of the story. Like Hugo cabret bothered him then. But now he can handle it.
I was also going to chime in on the news thread, he watches the news with us but willingly leaves when we ask him to, when we decide it not appropriate for him. Although sometimes there is no escape, was in a pizza place and they had the news on - you know because you can't eat without watch something!!! And he turns to me and says, what's rape? They was a fun moment as I gathered my thoughts.
DeHe
