I hear you on this. Back before the book series was finished and before the films were even thought of, my foster son discovered Harry Potter.

This was a kid who would rather chew sand than read a book. To say he did not do well in school would be not to say enough.

But once he discovered the books, he raced through them, and one year we even did the whole waiting in line at the bookstore for a midnight release. At least he didn't want to wear a costume, lol.

The books are by no means masterpieces, but they engage children, and they are very relatable. My foster son especially engaged with the books because he had been abused and abandoned by his birth mother, then raised in a home where he felt unwelcome.

He said coming to our house was like moving to Hogwarts.

I read the books because he was reading them, and I certainly could not object to any of the values in the pages. They seemed like values any good parent would want to impart.

That's one of the reasons I was so surprised by what a transphobic bigot the author turned out to be —and so irrationally and loudly bigoted.

Nevertheless, I suppose children are going to continue to be entranced by the Harry Potter universe. Adults are less likely to be, because it's not very well constructed, but then neither is the universe of Peter Pan or any number of other works for children.

If I were parenting my foster son now, I guess I'd take the whole thing as a teaching moment. To talk to him about how Rowling isn't living out the values she put in her characters' mouths. I might even compare her to a certain teacher in the books who wears pink all the time. 🤣

And maybe that's the best thing any of us can do, use the values in the book to criticize the values of the author.