What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that though there is a high level of violence and emotional upset, the morality and boost to reading ability more than balance them out. A group of teens fight adults who want to kill them and a major character dies (kids were warned before the book came out). Harry is tortured in the same manner as the fourth book, with a curse that makes him writhe in pain. Another character is brutally attacked by a snake. A very sad scene shows Neville's parents in a mental ward of sorts, barely recognizing their son. Positive themes from earlier books of friendship, equality, and loyalty continue to flourish, but Harry develops a short fuse in this book as well.

Families can talk about Harry's turbulent and triumphant moments. Why do you think he seems so much angrier in this book? Do you think he treated his friends fairly when he arrived at Grimmauld Place? When he resists his Occlumency lessons despite Dumdledore's request, how do you think it affects the outcome of the book? Why did he agree to let Rita Skeeter tell his story? When the article is banned at school everyone wants to read it -- and does. Can you think of examples of this happening in today's media?

Common Sense Media Review
It's a potent and volatile brew that Rowling has mixed up in her largest cauldron yet (870 pages!), and there's hardly a literary genre left out: fantasy, mystery, suspense, horror, humor, coming-of-age, school story, allegory, political thriller, buddy story.

Rowling is also picking her way carefully through the minefield of having her characters age realistically, not only through the obvious devices of increased moodiness and interest in the opposite sex, but through a general graying of the black-and-white world view of the earlier novels. The heroes (Harry in particular, but also Dumbledore and Sirius) have notable flaws, and the villains (especially Snape) become more human and sympathetic. Hermione provides Harry (and readers) with some useful insights into relations between the sexes, and Sirius, with wonderful British bluntness, has the best line of advice in the book: "A lot of people are idiots at the age of fifteen."

Rowling's achievement in this and the previous books is as magical as anything that happens in the story -- not only does she hold the reader's interest on every page of the longest children's novel ever published (including the 50 or so pages that come after the climax), but she provides a rich emotional subtext that never strays from the completely believable and realistic.

Rowling does here what few, if any, in either the literary or film world seem to be able to accomplish; to create a rip-roaring action/adventure/suspense thriller, loaded with the literary and wizarding equivalent of loud special effects, explosions, battles, and chases, in which the human elements, character, emotion, motivation, relationships, are more important and believable than the action.

And, perhaps equally importantly in a book with a high level of violence, when characters die, their loss has a profound and lasting impact on those left behind. Throughout the series Harry has been coping with the loss of his parents in his infancy. Throughout this book Harry and Cho are dealing with the death of Cedric at the end of Book 4. Even Aunt Petunia is not without feelings about her lost sister. As if to highlight this, Rowling introduces a new magical creature, thestrals, that can only be seen by those who have seen death.

With only two more books to go in the series, the reader can already see Rowling beginning to line up the elements for the finale: Voldemort and his Death Eaters, Dumbledore and his Order of the Phoenix to oppose him, the Ministry and the media in the middle, and the giants and centaurs (not to mention the muggles) up for grabs. Harry's anger and volatility are as much a liability as his power and courage are assets, Hermione's large heart may turn out to be even more important than her brilliance, and two previously overlooked characters, Neville and Ginny, may be essential as well.

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