capricious nerd / nerd teacher [books] reviewed Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter, #1)
Engaging but frustrating.
3 stars
It'd been so long since I'd last read it, and that's taking into consideration that I read the books after the movies had come out (as an experiment of sorts that showed only two movies in the entire series made sense as stand-alone projects).
I always love the magic, the imagination, the vividness of the scenes in my head. I always enjoy the characters, including a handful of the side characters that I wish played a much larger part. I enjoy a lot of the messages that are in the novel, ranging from aspects of friendship to being an assertive person who stands up for what they believe.
But reading them again after having been a teacher for a while, it leads me to be concerned over aspects of things that were done with regards to what we term "duty of care." It leaves me with changes of perspective of …
It'd been so long since I'd last read it, and that's taking into consideration that I read the books after the movies had come out (as an experiment of sorts that showed only two movies in the entire series made sense as stand-alone projects).
I always love the magic, the imagination, the vividness of the scenes in my head. I always enjoy the characters, including a handful of the side characters that I wish played a much larger part. I enjoy a lot of the messages that are in the novel, ranging from aspects of friendship to being an assertive person who stands up for what they believe.
But reading them again after having been a teacher for a while, it leads me to be concerned over aspects of things that were done with regards to what we term "duty of care." It leaves me with changes of perspective of people like Severus Snape (who doesn't seem to maintain a fully consistent characterisation in some places and has a shoddy excuse for why he'd protect Harry, but I think this is largely because Rowling made it too obvious that he'd be a bait-and-switch; he's also given a personality for someone who should've left the teaching profession but stayed in because of reasons that no one really knows, since it's definitely not for the benefit of the students they're treating poorly) and Albus Dumbledore (who knowingly brought something on-campus that's dangerous and provides tools that actively encourage a child to undertake the protection of that very thing, so he seems to be okay with varying degrees of child endangerment).
And, at the end, they knowingly send him back to a family that was openly abusive at the beginning despite the fact that he could very well have stayed on at the school (which I know leads into the next novel). Things like this often leave me feeling a little uncomfortable with aspects of the story, especially now that I'm an adult (and very specifically one who works with children and has experience in a variety of schools).
It's a weird conflict to have that it's an engaging story with such awkward elements of characters or in-world policy.
