Slacks for Ella Funt

I decided to reread the two most recent Harry Potter books because it’s fall, which always makes me feel in a back-to-school mood. I always wanted to go to an old-fashioned British boarding school, and wear a uniform and study in a wood-panelled classrooms. So I was a weird kid. When it gets to be fall, I still want to dress like a British schoolboy. The Harry Potter books have a great English boarding school setting—I want to go to Hogwarts and wear a Gryffindor scarf and hang out in the common room.

When the first books came out, I wasn’t that impressed. Pretty generic kids’ fantasy books, without the complexity of Lloyd Alexander or Philip Pullman. Playing heavily into every kid’s idea that they are misunderstood and special. But in the later books, I’ve been impressed with her plan to make the books more sophisticated as the characters and readers get older.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a political book, in the same way that Wicked is a political book. I don’t mean that they refer to contemporary politics, though both do. They endow their fantasy world with political organization and machinations. They show that even fantasy worlds don’t exist without structure and leadership, good or bad.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince feels mostly like a  fairly typical YA novel—teenage characters exploring their relationships with each other and their places in the world. Harry realizes the fallibility of adults, even the ones he admires. As a fan of YA novels, I am pleased.