by SherriBerry » Fri Jul 09, 2010 6:10 pm
I love the Harry Potter series, but I didn't get into them when they first came out. I had just started working for Chapters and the third book was out that August - I thought it sounded interesting, but it was a children's series and I didn't want to jump on the bandwagon anyway. All of the hype actually put me off.
Fast forward about 4 years and I was staying at my best friend's house who had just bought the DVD of The Chamber of Secrets and being a good guest, I was going to watch it with her and her husband, but thought I should watch The Philosospher's Stone first so I wasn't lost. I was hooked from that point - what a brilliant story! Luckily she also had the books, but I read the first one that night and went to the bookstore the next day to buy the rest that were out.
The series began rather darkly, with Harry Potter orphaned when his parents are murdered, but it wasn't dwelled upon or shown graphically in the movie. As the characters grow up, so do the readers so they're at an age where they can handle the developments. Reading the books is one thing - it's safer for a younger child to process, but parents have to be careful about whether they are old enough to watch the later movies. Some of the imagery is dark and too scary for kids. I was not thrilled to watch dead bodies float up and crawl out of the water in The Half-Blood Prince either, but I prefer the books to the movies. The first one gave me a great sense of things, but I didn't like how the stories were changed and edited for film.