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July 2003 Vol.4 Issue 7
Harry
Potter and the Order
of the Phoenix-Parents' review
The long awaited
book five in the Harry Potter series turns out to be a long
read
"Harry Potter
and the Order of the Phoenix" fits right in to the series
of books as they have unfolded this far. In this fifth book
in the series, Harry is taken through his fifth year at Hogwarts,
the School for Wizards. Harry has aged into his brooding and
rebellious teen-age period in this his fifteenth year. In
this episode we have a Harry who has lost his earlier sweet
disposition and is now quick to lash out, even at his friends.
In all her books
thus far, J. K. Rowling does much more with description, setting,
and characters than she does with plot. That is no less true
for this book. Unfortunately, in the 870 pages of detail adult
readers may start to question the undue amount of verbiage
that does nothing to further the plot. But these books are
not being written for adult readers. Rowling's constituency
now is a huge population of kids who just want to have this
description and these characters to hang on to. The more the
better, and who cares about plot! Millions of kids are reading
and talking about what they read. Hooray!
Note that "Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" does not stand by
itself. That is true of all the books beyond the first one,
but is even more true for this one. There are numerous allusions
that are meaningless unless earlier volumes have been read.
If you want to entice your child to read the Potter books
or read them aloud to younger children, start with volume
one and not volume five.
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