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Yes the Harry Potter series is becoming darker but that is what makes it a classic piece of youth literature. Looking at pieces of classic children's literature that have been untainted by Disney and others one will see that children's literature was not all pretty rainbows and unicorns. It was dark, it was dangerous, it prepared children for the dangers of life that they would face when they grew up.

Firstly look at the little mermaid. In Hans Christian Anderson's story the little mermaid does fall in love with the prince to the point where she becomes obsessed. She saves the prince from a storm and leaves him on a beach where he is then cared for by another girl, a princess. To be with the prince the little mermaid goes through extreme pain to have her tail split which is the result of a potion that she gets from the sea witch who in turn took her voice. When the little mermaid gets to be with the prince he treats her more like a pet than a friend or lover. All the while the little mermaid is under a time crunch, for if the prince could not love her enough to forget his parents then the little mermaid would die. Since mermaids don't have souls this would be a horrible fate. In the end the prince didn't love her enough. He married the girl that had taken care of him all while the little mermaid watched. While sailing home the little mermaid's sisters come to her and tell her that with the knife they give to her she could kill the prince and come home and her spell would be broken. The little mermaid can't go through with it for she loves the prince too much. She instead takes her own life.

This is but one example of how classic children's literature is in fact dark. Life is not always happy, we don't always get our way so therefore why shouldn't our literature prepare us for those eventualities. Even the happy little nursery rhymes we tell our children have dark overtones.

The story of Harry Potter is the story of a teenage boy who has to face great evil. Of course it's going to be dark. If not just for the fact that it's about a teenager, how many of us went through our teenage years without a bit of dark teenage angst?

By making all of children's literature "happy go lucky" and not adding in a touch of reality we are in fact doing a disservice to our next generation.

Learn more about this author, Diana Tierney.
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