Harry Potter's target audience

Puddle Jumper · Apr 14, 2006

I was wondering what you guys thought about the target audience for every book in this series being "young readers." Isn't the young readers category typically between the ages of 9 and 13? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Goblet of Fire was the first film to receive a PG-13 rating and I admit when I read the graveyard scene in the book, I'd feel a bit uncomfortable with younger readers reading the book. The films seem to get it right, realizing the books are becoming darker and directed at a teenage audience who is 13+.

Or are kids today just capable of reading these dark images without worry, having become desynthesized by all they see on tv and in movies?

Jamesaritchie · Apr 15, 2006

Puddle Jumper said:
I was wondering what you guys thought about the target audience for every book in this series being "young readers." Isn't the young readers category typically between the ages of 9 and 13? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Goblet of Fire was the first film to receive a PG-13 rating and I admit when I read the graveyard scene in the book, I'd feel a bit uncomfortable with younger readers reading the book. The films seem to get it right, realizing the books are becoming darker and directed at a teenage audience who is 13+.

Or are kids today just capable of reading these dark images without worry, having become desynthesized by all they see on tv and in movies?

Kids today? Have you ever read the Brothers Grimm? Especially the original versions, and not the sanitized sillliness too many kids have been forced to read for the last thirty years.

These things make Harry Potter look like a Sunday school lesson. They're ten times as dark as anythng in Harry Potter. And many of them don't even have a happy ending. They're true dark horror, and kids under twelve have eaten them up for more than two hundred years.

Desensitized kids are definitely NOT the target audience. The aim of a dark scene has always been to scare the bejebbers out of the kid. Harry Potter is a piker at this.

PG-13 does not mean kids under thirteen can't or shouldn't watch a movie, it only means they should watch it with parental permission.

TrickyFiction · Apr 15, 2006

I get the impression that Rowling's target audience ages with Harry.
It's like she's aiming for a generation, rather than an age bracket.

Sage · Apr 15, 2006

TrickyFiction said:
I get the impression that Rowling's target audience ages with Harry.
It's like she's aiming for a generation, rather than an age bracket.

This is what I have heard as well. That around the age of 11 is the target for the first book, & w/ each year the age increases. You can see it in the writing if you're looking. Going back to reread the books before the 6th came out, I was struck by how different the writing was from the Philosophers Stone to PoA, GoF, & OotP (& I skipped the first two that time around because of it).

Puddle Jumper · Apr 15, 2006

Jamesaritchie said:
Kids today? Have you ever read the Brothers Grimm? Especially the original versions, and not the sanitized sillliness too many kids have been forced to read for the last thirty years.

These things make Harry Potter look like a Sunday school lesson. They're ten times as dark as anythng in Harry Potter. And many of them don't even have a happy ending. They're true dark horror, and kids under twelve have eaten them up for more than two hundred years.

Desensitized kids are definitely NOT the target audience. The aim of a dark scene has always been to scare the bejebbers out of the kid. Harry Potter is a piker at this.

PG-13 does not mean kids under thirteen can't or shouldn't watch a movie, it only means they should watch it with parental permission.

Did the Brothers Grimm ever have any occultic feel though where a child was being tortured? The whole graveyard scene at the end of the fourth book had a very occultic feel I thought where Harry was tortured, his blood violently taken out of him to bring his enemy back to life.

I guess a bonus is that with as thick as the fourth book is, the younger the reader is, the less likely they are to read it. Someone I worked with said her boyfriend's son read the first three but refused the fourth when he saw how long it was. He was elementary age.

majiklmoon · Apr 15, 2006

My son read it when he was 9 - there weren't any issues, but we have always spent a lot of time discussing what is real vs what is make believe

Christine N. · Apr 16, 2006

Um, dude, go buy a copy of the Brothers Grimm. Unabrigded. There's the lopping off of parts of feet to make a glass slipper fit, the pecking out of eyes, sleeping with a corpse, axe murder, and much more.

They're pretty darn gruesome.

Birol · Apr 16, 2006

If Brothers Grimm stories were made into movies based on how they were actually written, they would probably receive an R-rating for blood, violence, and sexual situations.

PattiTheWicked · Apr 16, 2006

Puddle Jumper said:
Did the Brothers Grimm ever have any occultic feel though where a child was being tortured?

Let's see. There's the mean old witch who fattens up Hansel and Gretel so she can eat them. There are any number of horrid step-parents who wish to see children killed ("Cut out her heart, and bring it to me as proof of the deed!" the queen told the woodsman.) A number of people in Grimms' tales SELL their children (Tom Thumb comes to mind). Giants eat people, and not only do they eat them, they sing songs about smelling their blood. Ick. Easily as creepy as anything JKR could come up with.

Interestingly, in Grimms' tales, there seems to be a recurring motif of children who have lost one or both of their biological parents and are being raised by unloving foster/step families. Not unlike our Harry, really.

Also, if you've ever read any of the Grimm tales, they are deeply rooted in Norse and Teutonic mythology. Not so coincidentally, many of Rowling's critters and ideas are based in actual myth, not just something she invented. From the basilisk to the eerily unDisneyfied mermaids in GOF to dragons to the talking chess pieces of Lewis Carrol's Alice, there are a TON of recycled mythological features in the HP series.

The whole point of fairy tales is to teach a lesson that will be remembered due to the impact of the story itself. Themes like friendship and loyalty are the core of the Potterverse, and the kids always manage to stay together despite the horrific things they've had to endure along the way.

Lyra Jean · Apr 16, 2006

I'd choose JKR's mermaids over Disney's every day of the week.

Birol · Apr 16, 2006

If I remember correctly, in the original Snow White, the queen who ordered the beautiful young girl's death was her biological mother, not her stepmother. The story had to do with the jealousy a mother can feel for her own child as the mother's beauty fades and the child's blossoms.

Azure Skye · Apr 16, 2006

TrickyFiction said:
I get the impression that Rowling's target audience ages with Harry.
It's like she's aiming for a generation, rather than an age bracket.

I would agree with that as well.

Jamesaritchie · Apr 16, 2006

Potter

The themes age with Harry, not the target audience. The last thing teh writer or publisher wishes to do is leave behind the largest block of readers they have, which is the nine to twelve block. Rowling has, since the first book, tried to aim at as wid ean audience as possible, and has succeeded very well. But the largest block of readers, even for the most recent book, is still the same group that flocked to book one.

First rule of series writing is never change audiences in mid-series. The first audience wants to finish the series, and a new audience is unlikely to start the series mid-stream.

Nine to twelve year old kids see worse things than Harry Potter on the news every day. We simply live in a time, an extremely rare time in history, when parents, particularly American parents, still tend to think of twelve year olds as babies that have to be protected from anything and everything.

Kids aren't like this unless the parents make them like this. Nine to twelve year olds still love the Harry Potter books, and if you go by the numbers, they love them more now than when book one came out.

PattiTheWicked · Apr 16, 2006

I think Rowling's got the best of both worlds. She's got the original audience that read HP when the first book came out, and they're aging along with Harry and his pals. But each year, as a new group of readers hits that "I think I can tackle Harry Potter" age, the cycle begins again. In our school library, we can't keep the Harry books on the shelf. One third- or fourth-grader returns them, and another checks it out. A lot of times they never even come out of the cart before they're back in the line. I've got a few kids who have already read the whole series and are actually RE-reading them because the stories just resonate so much with them.

Lyra Jean · Apr 16, 2006

Harry Potter is in your school library. That's awesome.

Sage · Apr 16, 2006

Jamesaritchie said:
The themes age with Harry, not the target audience. The last thing teh writer or publisher wishes to do is leave behind the largest block of readers they have, which is the nine to twelve block. Rowling has, since the first book, tried to aim at as wid ean audience as possible, and has succeeded very well. But the largest block of readers, even for the most recent book, is still the same group that flocked to book one.

First rule of series writing is never change audiences in mid-series. The first audience wants to finish the series, and a new audience is unlikely to start the series mid-stream.

The target audience is aging with Harry. If it takes JKR a year to write each book (& at times it's taken her more), the original readers of the first book have aged.

majiklmoon · Apr 16, 2006

rosemerry said:
Harry Potter is in your school library. That's awesome.

why wouldn't they be in a school library?

rdfamily · Apr 16, 2006

Sage said:
The target audience is aging with Harry. If it takes JKR a year to write each book (& at times it's taken her more), the original readers of the first book have aged.

But that doesn't allow for new readers who are coming into that age group, and the original readers who are outgrowing that topic. My niece was a major HP fan in the beginning, but now she's older and isn't interested in HP or that genre anymore. Not everyone wants to continue with a book series simply because they liked it when they were 11.

PattiTheWicked · Apr 16, 2006

majiklmoon said:
why wouldn't they be in a school library?

I remember a few schools decided not to shelve them because of that whole "witchcraft and magic" thingie, but that's been a few years ago. I have no idea if there are still schools that don't have HP in their library. Heck, I'm in the heart of conservative territory and we not only have HP in the library, the kids can also earn beaucoup reading points for each book (last time I checked, GOF was worth 32 or something, which is pretty much the reading point jackpot for a fourth grader).

majiklmoon · Apr 16, 2006

PattiTheWicked said:
I remember a few schools decided not to shelve them because of that whole "witchcraft and magic" thingie, but that's been a few years ago. I have no idea if there are still schools that don't have HP in their library. Heck, I'm in the heart of conservative territory and we not only have HP in the library, the kids can also earn beaucoup reading points for each book (last time I checked, GOF was worth 32 or something, which is pretty much the reading point jackpot for a fourth grader).

grrrrrr...you know, I totally wasn't even thinking about that. *sigh* I'm lucky in that both the school that I work at and the school my children attend are fairly open minded about the whole HP phenomena.

p.s. your pirate alphabet book looks AWESOME - I'll be adding it to my personal library for sure!

Puddle Jumper · Apr 16, 2006

majiklmoon said:
why wouldn't they be in a school library?

Have you never seen the news air controversy over the books? There are some who believe it teaches witchcraft to children and therefore should be banned from schools. The same kinds of people who hold Harry Potter book burning parties. I remember them talking about that on the news once. I thought it was ridiculous because the publishers don't care what the buyers do with their books so long as they're buying them.

Last time I checked, no one in this world can flick a little wooden stick and make magical things happen.

RMS · Apr 17, 2006

I have to admit to having been one of those children who loved the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and now as an adult I love the Harry Potter series.
I think the horror has always been there in childrens literature but I think kids today have lived through so much daily horror on the news that it just seems more pronounced now-a-days.
When Jon Benet Ramsey died, my youngest was about her age and that was our first real experience with horrors on the evening news. I didn't even realize he was paying attention to it until he came up and asked me about it. He was 5. He is a member of JK Rowlings target audience and has grown up with Harry along with 9/11 and Columbine. Unfortunately its a whole new world out there. In my opinion, the mystery and magic of Harry Potter probably makes it easier for the kids to deal with the real horrors that occur everyday.

Jamesaritchie · Apr 18, 2006

rdfamily said:
But that doesn't allow for new readers who are coming into that age group, and the original readers who are outgrowing that topic. My niece was a major HP fan in the beginning, but now she's older and isn't interested in HP or that genre anymore. Not everyone wants to continue with a book series simply because they liked it when they were 11.

No, not everyone, but teh vast majority are still interested, and the number of nine to twelve year olds reading the Potter books has gone up, not down.

Jamesaritchie · Apr 18, 2006

RMS said:
I have to admit to having been one of those children who loved the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and now as an adult I love the Harry Potter series.
I think the horror has always been there in childrens literature but I think kids today have lived through so much daily horror on the news that it just seems more pronounced now-a-days.
When Jon Benet Ramsey died, my youngest was about her age and that was our first real experience with horrors on the evening news. I didn't even realize he was paying attention to it until he came up and asked me about it. He was 5. He is a member of JK Rowlings target audience and has grown up with Harry along with 9/11 and Columbine. Unfortunately its a whole new world out there. In my opinion, the mystery and magic of Harry Potter probably makes it easier for the kids to deal with the real horrors that occur everyday.

I think the notion that it's a different world is a complete myth. Being able to watch news broadcasts aside, there has never been a gentler age in history for children, and by a wide, wide margin. Children used to live the horror they only see on teh news now. Not so very long ago, a nione year old was considered old enough to work, to sell into indentured servitude, to take to a public hanging, etc. Child abuse, child molestation, and all sorts of other ills were far more common, and the children almost never had a legal recourse.

Even today, there are dozens of countries where children would lauigh at the worst horrors seen on the nightly news becaus etheir daily lives are far worse in every way.

We live in a time, one that has only spanned a few decades, where children are almost insanely sheltered and protected, and where growing up is put off as long as possible.

God help the sheltered child,
When his shelter has been shorn,
And he steps out in the world,
To find that roses all have thorns.

--J. D. Ireland.

Sage · Apr 18, 2006

Jamesaritchie said:
We live in a time, one that has only spanned a few decades, where children are almost insanely sheltered and protected, and where growing up is put off as long as possible.

LOL. This reminds me of a review I read for the My Little Pony dvds. An 80's cartoon about ponies, friendship, & rainbows... & people were complaining that the original episodes were too dark. If it wasn't too dark for the kids in the 80's, why would it be now?

Harry Potter's target audience

Puddle Jumper

Jamesaritchie

TrickyFiction

Who?

Sage

Our Lady of Parentheticals

Puddle Jumper

majiklmoon

Christine N.

haz a shiny new book cover

Birol

Around and About

PattiTheWicked

Unleashing Hell.

Lyra Jean

Two years old now.

Birol

Around and About

Azure Skye

Huh?

Jamesaritchie

PattiTheWicked

Unleashing Hell.

Lyra Jean

Two years old now.

Sage

Our Lady of Parentheticals

majiklmoon

rdfamily

PattiTheWicked

Unleashing Hell.

majiklmoon

Puddle Jumper

RMS

Jamesaritchie

Jamesaritchie

Sage

Our Lady of Parentheticals