How You Can Tell Harry Potter is a Children’s Book
This keeps on coming up. A quick review for obsessed adults.
5 min readFeb 13, 2023
- All the main characters are children. Generally speaking, if all the main characters in a book are children, it’s a book for children. Every now and then a novel will be written about children, for adults — Lord of the Flies comes to mind — but most books for adults are about adults.
- The whole series is about things children care about. Almost the entire series takes place at school. The major plot elements of each book concern school, parents, teachers, siblings, bullies, prom, finals, first love, and intermural sports tournaments. Each book begins with the students starting a new year at school, with new teachers and new fellow students, and ends with the end of that school year. We do get a look at the outside world — political stuff, prison, a bank — but all of this is encountered through school and teachers. Lord of the Flies is about children whose plane crashes on an island in the midst of World War 3, leaving them to form their own society and descend into primitive madness. Harry Potter is about kids going to school. Even when it’s about a magical battle between warring clans of wizards that will decide the fate of the entire world, it’s about kids going to school.
- The funny names. Dumbledore…
