A Few Thoughts About Reading Harry Potter
I am a die-hard Harry Potter fan.
I talked about my family’s history with Harry Potter last year, when I wrote about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, so I won’t rehash it here, but suffice it to say I love Harry Potter.
As a librarian, Harry Potter was always something of a sticky issue because it was so wildly popular, which meant all the little kids wanted to read it too, and these first graders who wanted to feel grown-up would beg to check them out, even though I knew for a fact they could hardly read, and they’d just carry those giant books around for a week without really being able to read them.
I didn’t want to be the librarian who forbade children to check out a book they really wanted to check out, but I also didn’t want them to have nothing they could actually read for the week.
I finally settled on the deeply unsatisfying method of suggesting they get something else and then letting them get Harry Potter if they insisted.
And, of course, the books get darker and more complex as they go along, which was perfect when you were growing up alongside the books, and less perfect when you start the first one at age six.
All of which is to say that when I frequently get asked what the right age to read Harry Potter is, I don’t have a great answer.
(I love Amy’s plan about reading aloud one book in the series every October, although I don’t know if that’s what we’ll do. I can’t argue, though, that October is the BEST time to read Harry Potter).
I wasn’t planning on reading Harry Potter to Ella until she was in about second grade, but then last year, we were going to Harry Potter world with my family and Bart suggested that Ella would enjoy it more if she knew at least the basic characters and settings.
We read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and she seemed to like it, but I could tell she was having a hard time keeping track of all the characters.
I was surprised that she was struggling a little, since I think of her as an advanced reader, but she insisted she wanted to read the second one together too.
But within about four or five chapters, she quietly asked if we could read something else instead, and we put it away.
I know lots of people who have kindergarteners or first graders who love Harry Potter, but since that didn’t seem to be the case in our family, I figured we’d try again next year, when she was in third grade.
Then, when we went to Utah a few weeks ago, I picked up Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix from my in-laws bookshelf.
I had super happy memories of re-reading the entire series at my in-laws when Ella was a baby and I was nursing for hours each day, and I figured it was time to read some of the series again.
Of course, I spent the next two weeks reading #5, #6, and #7 in any spare moment I had, including staying up way too late one night when Bart was gone to finish #7 and crying over the ending.
Probably swayed by my reading, Ella asked if, instead of reading The Witches as I’d planned, we could read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
I was pretty sure she didn’t remember the first one super well, so I suggested we re-read the first Harry Potter book again together. She was insistent that she DID remember it, but agreed to read it together.
We flew through it in less than a week, (I’d read a few chapters at night to her and then she’d read a few on her own) and last week, we spent about an hour with everyone curled up on the couch after school reading the last couple of chapters aloud.
When Snape turned out not to be trying to steal the sorcerer’s stone, Ella just about lost her mind with excitement (and let me know that I’d been right about her not really remembering it very well).
It was exactly the kind of magical Harry Potter reading moment I’d been waiting for.
Now we’ve jumped right into the second book, which I haven’t read in YEARS, and oh, I just love every moment of it.
There’s nothing quite like experiencing a favorite book again with your children.
(And now I’m dying to go back and read #3 and #4 because Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite of the series aside from maybe Half-Blood Prince).
I’d love to hear about how you’ve handled Harry Potter and when you feel is the right age for Harry Potter! And whenever I hear from someone that they never read them as a child but are reading them now, I’m just a tiny bit jealous of getting to experience them for the very first time.
Photos by Grace + Vine Studios
I started in 1999. I was a young teacher and my middle school reading buddies recommended them. I credit Harry with making all three of my late blooming boys into readers. I am on my third full read aloud of the entire series. We started with quarantine and should finish around Halloween. My child who is tuned into every page this time is 13. He has read them on his own, as my older two have at least twice. But everyone loves the read aloud: I do all the voices and my inner Hermione is just amazing. I’m going to be the coolest grandma one day.
My rule of thumb is that your kid is old enough for the book when they are old enough for you to discuss the major themes. The series we struggled with was Hunger Games. We started that too early for my oldest. I knew I’d made a mistake with how enthusiastic his rooting for her to win became. He clearly was too young. The themes get darker and more complex as you in HP. Just be ready to talk about them!!!
It honestly depends on the child. I have been reading novels aloud to my boys for 3 years. last year my husband read to my boys (5yo & 7y0) 1-4 and finished the rest on audio during quaratine. And then come November they boys asked me to start them over again! So we just finished The Goblet of Fire, after 1-3, haha! My boys can’t get enough.
Yes! It’s absolutely so dependent on your child’s abilities, interest and maturity (which is why I didn’t suggest that there was a right age to read it!).
This is very true. We leave in a small housing compound with two little girls a year older than my daughter. Of the 3, she (a very precocious reader with good comprehension and maturity) she is the only one to have read them herself (she started at 6.5 and just finished the 7th at 7.5). But all 3 girls adore Harry Potter (one through movies, on through audiobooks, one through reading). They inhabit this hyperrich fantasy world (I think because hey are so young). So that may be an advantage of introducing it younger..the intense experience they can have of it. I don’t find HO any more violent or tragic than the scripture we study, so the maturity of the themes didn’t bother me. For my 5 year old son I doubt he’ll be reading these til he’s 10-11 but he is utterly involved in the HP fantasies of his older sister. It’s a joy!
I started my girl when she was 8, getting her the first big illustrated edition for Christmas. Then I got her the second for her august birthday, then 3rd at Christmas and 4th for her 9 3/4 birthday in May 😆 the fifth one comes out soon so she’ll get that at Christmas and THEN idk what to do! It’ll be years before the 6th one is out (btw also 3 and 6 are my faves too!) and then years more until the 7th. I had to wait years to read the fourth book on, but they’d literally not been written yet. And they get so dark. I just don’t know what the right move is, it’s so hard! She’s only 10 right now. But when her friends are finishing the series that’s hard.
Your email today came at a great time. I haven’t read the books, but enjoyed all the movies. The books have been on my TBR and I figured eventually just read with kiddos. My oldest turns 8 today and has heard about HP through school and has been interested. Today he will get the first illustrated HP book. He is a pretty sensitive kiddo and easily frightened but we’ve been working through the Dragon Master series and he seems to do better with subject matter that is more fantastical (wizards, spells, dragons, etc). All that being said, if he isn’t into it, I’ll at least finally read the first one 🙂
I’m a big Harry Potter fan and originally got into it to connect with my younger siblings. I was insistent that my kids not watch the movies until they read the books. When my daughter was in 4th grade (age 10), she read the entire series in about 3 months, including watching each movie with me after she finished each book. I re-read them at the same time (we used the full-length non-illustrated books) to refresh myself on the details and we spent lots of time just reading silently together (we call it snuggle reading) while my younger daughter, who couldn’t read yet, would flip through her books and I’d read some with her. It was a fun opportunity to celebrate a shared love of reading and encouraging my youngest to engage in books as well. Plus, when she turned 11 a few months later, we had a big HP party…the significance of that age was not lost on us, of course.
I went to library school when book #4 came out, and my jr high ELA students informed me that I could not pursue a library career without first joining them in Harry Potter. They lent me their bootlegged audio books (I know, wrong, I feel shame), and they made bets on which one would be my favorite (the answer is #3 and later #6, like the author). By the time I finished Goblet, I had to wait in the pre-order lines with my Millenial, HP mentors. I miss them.
As a now 20-year librarian veteran of middle and high schoolers and a mom of an 18-year-old college freshman, I can say that it is always best to invite young readers in and watch for their level of excitement. If it is not there, or if they drift or lose interest in the characters (all of those amazing details and personalities), they are too young or they are a different kind of reader. I personally feel that books 1-4 are best appreciated between 4th-6th grade and that books 5-7 are best appreciated between 7th-9th. 5-7 feel very much more YA and 1-4 more J. There is a lot of relationship and identity stuff going on in those later books with politics, media, fascists, indentured elves, generational wealth, sports, and teen angst, sometimes in ALL CAPS. I think that a smart 3rd grader can read them, but I found my students who came to middle school who said “meh” read them too soon. My own son? We read them aloud whenever he voiced interest in my ask, and then we watched the movie after. I think we started in 1st grade, restarted in 3rd, paused, and finished in 7th.
The passion that my first students had for the series, who first encountered Harry when they, themselves were sixth graders, has never been matched. More kids struggle with feature length films and longer books these days, but my high school readers still pick them up and enjoy, and we still sometimes sort ourselves into houses (Ravenclaw – maybe Slythern for me). It might be time for me to bring back some Harry Potter trivia or a reading challenge and see if I can rekindle another group of fans.
We read the first book during Covid lockdown when my kiddo was six. She loved it! What seemed to help visualize things was we borrowed the beautiful Mina Lina editions from our library. Since then we have read about a book a year after her birthday. I tried the illustrated Jim Kay version for the second book and she was not a fan. Since book four takes a darker turn, we are waiting until she turns eight. This is my kid who loves all things scary though so I have friends who have waited longer because they knew the books would be too scary for their kid. Really there is no right age, just take cues from your kid if they are into it. That being said, my 15 yo niece has no interest in the books, which hurts my librarian heart a bit.
My 11year old is obsessed with the Harry Potter books and movies she loves to watch and read them over and over. About a year ago I introduced her to quidditch through the ages I thought it was boaring but she loved it. Recently we started listening to fantastic beasts and where to find them, like quidditch through the ages it was like a text book and she loved it. I know that the movie of fantastic beasts and where to find them is different from the book what age do you recommend for that?