From: Merri Lindgren <mlindgren>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 09:17:13 -0500

Laura said:
"I have to agree that I don't like Harry himself in this book as much. His whining crankiness puts me off."

I had the opposite reaction to Harry's general bad temper. By the end of book four, I was starting to feel that Harry was too perfect, always making the right decisions. Even when breaking rules, he usually had a greater good as his goal. For me, he was in danger of becoming a predictable hero, losing the complexity of character that makes a book provocative and memorable.

Harry's quickness to anger, and the resulting errors of judgment that he makes in book 5, along with his feelings of resentment toward Dumbledore for his inexplicable behavior, made him feel like a credible teenager (albeit a wizard). It seemed to fit with the new focus on looking ahead to life after Hogwarts, and nicely reflected Harry's reaction to new information about his father -- a hero on a pedestal, or a real person with faults of his own?

Merri

Merri Lindgren, Librarian mlindgren at education.wisc.edu Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Received on Wed 25 Jun 2003 09:17:13 AM CDT