We don't need no education

[altariel]

katlinel has a splendid post about the Harry Potter books as boarding school stories rather than fantasy books.

Comments

[furius.livejournal.com]

It's funny, when my mother asked me what HP's like when I first started reading them, I said it's a combination of English boarding school stories (Blyton co-ed) and Roald Dahl. She then told some of her friends and actually managed to convince them that it's not morally subversive books with magic...-_-

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The idea of them being school books passed me right by. I was completely distracted by the magic.


morally subversive books with magic

Related to this, Katlinel makes another excellent point about the HP books in the comments on that thread: "Boarding school stories are usually about conformity and assimilation, and that's what I see going on in HP, rather than the misfit finding their place."

[avon7.livejournal.com]

It took me ages to read them because of all the hype - but the moment I did I realised that they were just classic school stories. I bet I know exactly the books JK read as a kid. I still like them, quite a lot actually, but I can't be doing with the ooh-ahh this has changed children's literature bit!

[paranoidangel]

It took me ages to read them because of all the hype - but the moment I did I realised that they were just classic school stories.

I was going to say that :)

I thought as I was reading it that the reason they were popular is all the ordinary school stuff in there that everyone can relate to to some extent.