It was Lockdown 3, the very, very awful one, and I was walking across a lonely, cold field with the baby in a sling and the older one fighting invisible ninjas and I just thought let’s start Harry Potter for god’s sake, we need something to really get our teeth into. And you know what, the first 4 books are so great. What fun we had! That first book, banger after banger, Diagon Alley, Platorm 9 3/4, Sorting Hat, bang, bang bang. I am not shy to say, my Ron is unparalleled. We were in the zone, part of the club! Glasses, wand, World Book Day, Whomping Willow Lego. Sure, we never got past the 5th because half way through the fight scene you have to read a history of elevator maintenance in the Ministry of Magic and there’s nothing like a 6 year old to make it clear when enough is enough, but it was fun.
Sometimes, though, when I’m marvelling at my excellent Dumbledore I wonder if I’ll regret reading Harry Potter to my kid. Books for children often have that feeling. I was never allowed to read Enid Blyton when I was small ( though you’d better believe I absolutely scarfed them all down, plus The Naughtiest Girl in School and sundry Chalet Girls and all the books about jolly gels and mothers my mum worked all her life to make a thing of the past). Apart from the obvious intolerance for trans people of it all about JK Rowling, the hardest thing about Harry Potter in practical terms is the fatphobia. It. Is. Appalling. Fat people ooze, they bulge, they waddle. Their fatness is corruption. You just choke on the words as they come out of your mouth. It’s the worst. Blergh.
So what next, for the bit after the baby has gone to bed and the bigger one gets to put his head on my shoulder without having to listen to the Ois Frog? I was skulking round the bookshop grumpily about this when Tara pulled out Diana Wynn Jones’s Charmed Life and it was like a cartoon lightbulb went off in my brain. Charmed Life is the first book in the Chrestomanci series. Written in 1978, it’s about a little boy called Cat who has a big sister who is a witch. Their parents are dead and they get taken to a castle where the enchanter Chrestomanci and his family live. And then one day Cat goes into his sister’s bedroom and the girl in the bed is not his sister.
I mean, right? The most important thing to say is, Wynne Jones is a brilliant writer. She uses words with such pizzaz, but never tries too hard. Reading it, you think, here is where my kid will learn what fun it is to use words to tell a story, and also how a story really ought to work. And she started writing when her youngest child was two! Absolute madness. There are seven books, and the series is about a multiverse called the Related Worlds, but all you need to know is, it’s magic. That first book is actually one long Easter egg and she Taylor Swifts backwards through the rest of the series so the pieces come together one by one until you finally reach the moment Cat arrives at the Castle again. The world building is spectacular, the concepts are watertight. And unlike Rowling, who writes about danger in the world, Wynne Jones’s books are pretty much all about birth order and the trauma of family shapes. Bigger siblings are jealous, only children are too powerful, younger children are overlooked and indulged. Magic is not a gimmick but a reason, a consequence, a force. They are the original great magic books, the best, the biz.
My favourite book in the series is The Magicians of Caprona but the best is probably the Lives of Christopher Chant. And still! At the very end there is a bit that had me stopping and googling “Oh no Lives of Christopher Chant racist??” because it’s an old book and it is racist at the end. There’s nothing to find if you google it, but it’s there.
You really can’t mess about with books for kids. Imagine a kid reading something that made them feel smaller, ashamed, worried or frightened. Imagine a kid reading a book that normalised that for kids it didn’t affect. So then, what do you do? Here’s what I think. Stop. Point out the racism (or the sexism, holy moly Enid, or the fatphobia etc etc) and have a little chat about it. If you don’t want to stop, do it afterwards! I’m a laugh, I know, but you have to do it. Once at bedtime I heard my Jewish husband telling the 7 year old about anti-semitism and my first instinct was to rush in lalala and put my hands over my kid’s ears, but we can’t protect him from it, we can only be a place where discussion is encouraged.
I am still in two minds about this. Do you not read the Gringotts bits or not read Potter at all? You have to follow their enthusiasms, you have to believe in their taste or they won’t read. There are plenty of great contemporary middle grade books where you worry less, but still, not all. And you don’t get to read to your kids forever. Soon they are off into a world of Dogmans alone. Though a big thoughtful diverse list of reading is important, when things come up you should try to teach them how to read carefully, to teach them that thinking critically is a good part of reading.
This IS a recommendation for the Chrestomanci series! But it is also a recommendation for talking things through when you need to. For remembering that magic is not a way for middle grade readers to escape but a portal through which all sorts of things are being got wrong and right and moving and liberating and reinforcing and becoming grotesque and being magnificent. Reading is so much fun with kids. I think I love it the most of all the things I get to do. It should be a right laugh, unfettered, plunge-in fun. But, you know, be careful.
D what bliss it is in this time of your substack to be alive!! and to be alive & with all of the Chrestomancis **very heaven**. (Personally I am a Christopher Chant rising/ Witch Week moon but wish to hear more re Caprona at lunch.)