Harry Potter?
But those books are just for kids!

Well, I agree. Yup, just for children. So are other childish books like, say, the Narnia series. No deeper meaning for adults there. And only kids can understand A Wrinkle In Time's fantastic connotations, or enjoy the make-believe in J. R. Tolkein's The Hobbit. Once you pass the magical age of twelve you become totally unable to appreciate anything out of the ordinary. Wizards, magic, fantasy, and imagination in general are all to be left on the shelf by any self-respectingly mature person. Yes, once we grow up we must stop believing in fairies and accept reality, go drearily to work, go home, go to bed, wake up, and go back to work. We are robots here, people! We can't have any non-conformity, any free thought! Oh, my! Heaven forbid! Are you catching any sarcasm here!

Ok, my point, if you didn't quite catch it there amongst the dripping, poisonous pools of irony, is that Harry Potter is for people of all ages. Why? you ask.

1) Why should imagination in literature be restricted to those who don't need it?

2) Hi, the books are written in a very sophisticated way. The vocabulary is quite complex. It is simply that the story is about children, and is about magic and involves the imagination, which is frequently identified with children and often deeply hidden in adults. Well, we were all children at one point. We can still relate to this. Are children so low beneath those who are no longer young that we can't even deign to READ about them? Besides

3) They are entertaining, exciting, and good for the inner child. Those who think they are too old for Harry Potter are, if I may psychoanalyze people I have never met before, as most people do, probably insecure about their own age and maturity. It is not full-blown adults who are ashamed to read the series. it is mostly teenagers who, really, still identify with children but feel it to be beneath their dignity. Get over it.

4)And if you found yourself agreeing with my blatantly facetious remarks in the first paragraph, then you are proof of my theory that there is such a thing as Muggles and Wizards in the real world... But that magic in the books is metaphor for imagination in real life. Those with it can make anything happen, but those without it are Muggles, going blindly through life totally unaware of an entire other world coexisting with their own. If you are the kind of person who would refuse to read a book simply because it features children and is about magic and thus must be for children, despite the fact that teens and adults across the world have read and loved it, then you, my friend, I am sorry to say, are a definite Muggle. Of course, if you refuse to read the books, I suppose you'll never even know what I mean...

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