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.