Matthew de Abaitua
Editor-at-large of cult magazine The Idler and Film4 online

The films are terrible

My young children have never enjoyed, or responded to, any of the films thus far; several of them are positively diabolical.

The stories are exclusive

Children reading it will be heartbroken because Harry Potter is not about escapism, it is based in an elite world of “blood and entitlement” they will never be chosen to join.

Children won’t understand their allegorical meaning

Christopher Hitchens interprets the depiction of goblins and elves as explorations of anti-Semitism and slavery, but he would prefer to learn about aspects of history through books like Anne Frank’s Diary rather than through veiled allegorical terms.

They cannot be classed as a literary achievement

They are epic in form but not content; the narrative suffers from repetition between books, and the magic is not consequential; it is used like deus ex machina. The films make the repetition even more apparent as, despite the size of the books, “there is not enough plot to go around.”

The characters are inert

Regardless of their moral qualities, the characters fundamentally don’t change throughout the series. In the film the actors grow up but the characters remain the same; everything about them is determined from the outside, and they repeat themselves and their characteristics across each book.

Amanda Craig
Reviewer and broadcaster; children's book critic for The Times

The books are deservedly a phenomenon of our times

Harry Potter has electrified a whole generation of children and turned them on to reading at a time when reading has never been more embattled. It has made numerous fairy stories fresh and modern, and it is not elitist because who gets chosen as a witch/wizard is an absolute fluke. The whole thrust of the books is resolutely democratic.

Don’t read it so literally

These books are not intended to supplant real history but instead give children concepts of justice, humanity and fairness from which they can go on to tackle real life issues. “These are stories for children, not parables for adults.”

Muggles are not worthless

Harry has a foot in both camps and Mr Weasley is riveted by the Muggle world, so the two (wizards and those unable to perform magic) can co-exist. To see it in terms of privilege is to miss the point; what Rowling is doing is exploring what would happen if magic existed in the everyday world, which is one the reasons the stories so appeal to children. “Part of the appeal is rooting the magical in the mundane.”

Rowling created a world that ran away with her.

Rowling is not a stylist; her magic does not depend on the deployment of language. But narrative, and the “joy of an intricately told story” is in itself is a literary quality. After the third book her “world began to suffer from gigantism...taking on a Where’s Wally quality of obsessive detailing,” but if you are a child the more you find out about it, the more fascinating it becomes.

The characters do develop

Though not necessarily psychologically convincing, the characters are nevertheless very well drawn – every child in the world can identify with them, and Rowling has captured the essence of this classic triumvirate of friends. Although they don’t change they do deepen, in the sense that they become more themselves; “Harry becomes more heroic, more generous, more self-sacrificing, more brave.”