Book review: Harry Potter 2 and 3

Mulan and I have been a bit sick lately.  For most of the day yesterday, we lay side-by-side on the big bed, silently reading our books.  I had the third Harry Potter book, The Prisoner of Azkaban, while Mulan had the second book, The Chamber of Secrets.  We both finished our respective books last night.

After completing the first Harry Potter book [my book review is lost] a few weeks ago, I had been reading a chapter of The Chamber of Secrets to Mulan most days, and we had got about two thirds of the way through it.  But while in Hainan Island I got a cold and so stopped out-loud reading for a while.  Instead, while sunbathing on the beach, I sneakily finished the book on my own.  Meanwhile, impatiently, Mulan had also read a couple more chapters on her own.

After reading one more chapter out loud to Mulan yesterday (with lots of coughs and pauses), I asked her if she would like to finish reading it herself.  She said yes, and reassured me both that she could understand it independently, and that it was not too scary for her.

So, yesterday, Mulan read (with no problem) the final four chapters by herself, and is now keen on starting book number three.

If the theme of the first Harry Potter book was love, friendship, loyalty and family, then the theme of the second one is the fight against discrimination and the acceptance of those who are different.

In this book, we are introduced to the idea that some wizards come from ancient and continuous wizarding families, while others have been born to non-magical parents.  In addition, occasionally a non-magical person is born into magical families.  For some people in the wizarding world, there is an elitism that comes from being a wizard with a long wizarding family history.  They look down upon non-magical people or families.

With this as the background, tensions run high when the Chamber of Secrets is opened and there are “racially” motivated death threats and discrimination against those who are not from pure wizarding families.

Harry Potter and his friends, naturally, fight against this discrimination, in the same exciting and dynamic way that made the first book so enjoyable and not-put-down-able.

Coincidently, a few days ago, this article came out in the news.  The article tells us that there has been a series of academic studies done on the attitudes of children to gays, immigrants and refugees, both before and after having had parts of The Chamber of Secrets read to them.  Apparently, after several weeks of listening to this story there was a reduction in the children’s prejudice, and their attitudes to these groups of peoples improved.

With the Harry Potter characters being a year older (and the presumed reader also being a year older), the writing style and storyline of this second book is also slightly more mature.  There is not quite the same amount of silly physical humour as was in the first book.  There are the first hints of girl-boy attractions.  And the more tensely exciting parts of the story last longer and are more intense.

In my opinion, it is the mark of a brilliantly aware writer, to be able to make clever and subtle adjustments to the writing style to acknowledge and reflect the gradual maturing of the readers.  Most series of children’s books don’t do this, and they all carry on at the same level.  I think this was a wonderful idea for readers when the books first came out, and obviously it worked well to maintain the readership and turn the books into bestsellers.  But in our case, with a young reader, it complicates things a little.  Mulan is very eager to keep reading more books in the series, but I still don’t know how far to let her read before the maturity of the books has gone beyond her developmental level.  I can understand it will be a little frustrating for Mulan to have to stop at some place.

The third Harry Potter book, The Prisoner of Azkaban, tackles yet another social issue—that of justice and the criminal system.  We learn in this book that the wizarding world is sometimes corrupt.  Judges and political decision-makers apparently sometimes ignore the evidence and are swayed by those who use blackmail and money to achieve their power.  So, we learn, it is likely that sometimes the innocent are wrongly found guilty.

We also learn that the prison system is pretty horrific in the way the prisoners are treated by the guards.  At one point one of the characters asks Harry if even the truly guilty deserve to be treated in this way.

Harry and his friends are drawn into the issue of justice when one of the prisoners escapes the previously inescapable wizard prison and seeks out Harry at school.  In parallel to this, one of the beautiful and exotic school animals hurts a student during a lesson, and there is an investigation as to whether the animal should be put down.

Reflecting on these two incidents, the storyline pushes Harry and his friends to make decisions about whether to themselves break the rules, to help protect the innocent.  It raises the question of whether, when society is unjust, one is justified in breaking the rules of that society.  How much loyalty should we have to an unjust system?

In contrast to this, Harry and his friends, as young teenagers, are starting to be inclined to rebel.  For the first time they are starting to yell back at adults, and they continue to disregard the rules to do their own thing.  But Harry is gently rebuked by one of the good teachers when he breaks the rules to sneak out merely to have fun.  The teacher points out that the rules were there to protect Harry, and he is letting everyone down when he puts himself in danger just for a bit of silly fun.

So, the underlying message for the reader is about the appropriate questioning of authority and when to go so far as to break the rules.  It is about gaining the wisdom to understand why the rules are there, and learning to following them when they are just, even if they are personally unpleasant.  But it is also about gaining the wisdom to know when the rules are unjust, and knowing when and how to break them if doing so helps the innocent.  It takes time and the occasional mistake to gain this wisdom, and one needs to be helped along the way by good and wise teachers.

I have said to Mulan that she can independently read The Prisoner of Azkaban after she has finished all 48 Magic Tree House [my book review is lost] books that we have got here.  At the rate that she is reading them, this will be in the very near future.  Mulan agrees that this third Harry Potter book will be her last one for a while, and she won’t try the fourth book just yet.  I’ll read the fourth book in the near future, and have a think about when to reintroduce the series to Mulan.

(Update: my review of the fourth book is here.)