Is there room for sexuality in children´s books?

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Irvine511 said:


however, perhaps Rowling is more focused on the integrity of her characters than she is on maximizing her book sales?


I disagree with you here my friend. Pretty much everything else you say I agree with.

She was more concerned with sales. If she had outed him, while she was writing, it would have impacted quite a bit. Outing him after the fact, is indeed a sign of weakness on her part. The series is over, there was no reason to not include it in book 7.

Just my opnion,
 
Well, if they grow up and don't get excited by the book anymore because one of the characters is revealed to be gay... then so be it!
That's not the problem of the author, and it's not her intention to cater to the intolerant.
If they don't like book x, they should read book y. If the reason for not liking a book is that stupid, well, that kid has some real problems.
 
Dreadsox said:


I disagree with you here my friend. Pretty much everything else you say I agree with.

She was more concerned with sales. If she had outed him, while she was writing, it would have impacted quite a bit. Outing him after the fact, is indeed a sign of weakness on her part. The series is over, there was no reason to not include it in book 7.

Just my opnion,

I think there was very good reason not to address it in the book, other than the brief allusion she made to it.

The story is told from Harry's perspective. Without giving too much away plot-wise, a great deal of this book has to do with Harry learning things about Dumbledore's past, while regretting that he didn't have the foresight to get to know more about Dumbledore on a personal level, while he was alive. Throughout the series, Dumbledore was quite a private person, and he didn't volunteer much about himself, personally. Most of what Harry did eventually learn about Dumbledore kind of fell under the umbrella of Dumbledore's actions - and, from what we've learned, Dumbledore never acted on his 'infatuation' in a public way, that others would have been aware of. In other words, the vehicles chosen to expose Dumbledore's past did not have access to his personal, innermost feelings, all they knew was that for a time in his youth, Dumbledore took part in an unlikely friendship. One could argue that it would have been inorganic to stick in an overt "Dumbledore is teh gay" in the story, it just didn't fit.

As for her reasoning for not making it overt in the story being financially motivated, I just don't see it. Had she done so, she may have lost a few sales from people who didn't buy the book immediately, but I suspect those numbers would have been negligible. And, by stating this now, she's also risking future sales, sales of tickets and dvds for the next two movies, along with sales of the Potter-verse encyclopedia she's going to write in the future. To me, it just doesn't seem to jibe with someone who's financially motivated.
 
There is a helluva lot of imputed intent being tossed around in this thread, and not just by one side.
 
I see your point Vintage. Well written point. I have spent so much time reading these books with students, book clubs, my own children....I loved them, will continue to love them....and I am glad she implied it subtlely in the book. If it had been overt, I am not sure how much resistance there would have been. On a side bar, my wife, ran a book club exclusively around these books for years. Students were on waiting lists to get in. One of the best gifts a student ever gave her was a wand that she and her father made....it is incredible the detail, down to drilling a hole and putting a feather in the wand.

This woman has done more for students interest in literature than any childrens author in my life.
 
Dreadsox said:
This woman has done more for students interest in literature than any childrens author in my life.


i've never read a single HP book, nor am i interested, but i am very, very glad they exist.

i hope to discover them with a child one day.
 
Dreadsox said:
I see your point Vintage. Well written point. I have spent so much time reading these books with students, book clubs, my own children....I loved them, will continue to love them....and I am glad she implied it subtlely in the book. If it had been overt, I am not sure how much resistance there would have been. On a side bar, my wife, ran a book club exclusively around these books for years. Students were on waiting lists to get in. One of the best gifts a student ever gave her was a wand that she and her father made....it is incredible the detail, down to drilling a hole and putting a feather in the wand.

This woman has done more for students interest in literature than any childrens author in my life.

What a sweet gift to your wife! :)

I can certainly understand the questioning of her motives. My first reaction upon hearing it on the weekend was "Wtf? How does this fit in with the plot?" I was quite disturbed. :lol: Upon reading her original and subsequent statements and considering the plot ramifications, it makes perfect sense to me, and has added yet another layer of complexity for me. I applaud what she's done.
 
Harry Potter was very popular at the library I worked at. It made me happy to see that and other books that some people consider "evil" or whatever being checked out on a regular basis.

If a parent doesn't want their kids to read "Harry Potter" or anything else for whatever reason, that's their choice. I strongly disagree, but they're the parent, they have the right to raise their child their own way. I just hope that those same parents realize that their children may one day rebel against them and search out this "forbidden" material themselves (thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, people, for realizing that banning things only makes them more popular. I long for the day when the rest of the world catches on to that obvious concept). Either that, or those kids will be very ill-prepared for dealing with the real world. Don't act so shocked when either of those scenarios happens later.

Course, hopefully one day we'll get to a point where this sort of thing won't even be an issue anymore. That would be wonderful.

Angela
 
Irvine511 said:
i've never read a single HP book, nor am i interested, but i am very, very glad they exist.

i hope to discover them with a child one day.

I started reading one a long time ago and liked what I had read, but for some reason I just never got around to finishing it or going further into the series. I'd love to pick up where I left off, and I too have the same hopes you do regarding discovering them with a child.

And speaking of children, one of my favorite things about working at that aforementioned library was when I'd be in the children's section and see kids reading books I used to love when I was a kid. Just knowing that stuff's still popular all these years later-it's pretty cool.

Angela
 
Irvine511 said:



i've never read a single HP book, nor am i interested, but i am very, very glad they exist.

i hope to discover them with a child one day.

Up until about the 4th book, I thought of them as delightful children's stories, and my daughter had to goad me into reading each new release. I was wrong, they're so much more than that. I reread the entire series over the summer with a new appreciation for the earlier books.
 
U2girl said:


Bonovoxsupastar and phillyfan: that may be, but aren't you missing the parent (control) factor ?

:shrug:

Sure, she may lose a few readers due to bigotry. But how many will she gain due to the "controversy", or how many will she gain because she didn't cave into the bigots?
 
Dreadsox said:


I disagree with you here my friend. Pretty much everything else you say I agree with.

She was more concerned with sales. If she had outed him, while she was writing, it would have impacted quite a bit. Outing him after the fact, is indeed a sign of weakness on her part. The series is over, there was no reason to not include it in book 7.

Just my opnion,

What would be interesting is if she ever had originally outed him in the book? And did some force an edit? Who knows...

She's never said no to spin off books has she?
 
U2girl said:
Irvine: and until they grow up ? Maybe HP won't excite them anymore once they read it.

Bonovoxsupastar and phillyfan: that may be, but aren't you missing the parent (control) factor ?

:shrug:

I see at is this: some bigoted parents tell their children not to read Harry Potter. Some of them will read it anyway, somehow. Some will read it later in life. A few won't read them. And I feel for all of those children.

But I think it would be a much bigger issue if we had the ignorant essentially censoring authors because the authors don't want to lose readers to "controversy."

I certainly don't think when she said this that she had some kind of "agenda" or "cause" to push for, as has been stated (though not by you). And I don't think she gave a thought then or now to those who've reacted poorly.

Quite frankly. it's probably just confirming some thoughts by others, because what she says, well ... makes sense if you look at the literature. I don't see it as a problem at all. She's always had the style of evolving her characters outside the pages.
 
My Son is going to be Harry Potter this year.....for the 4th year in a row. He is 7. I said to him, Ben you already were Harry...

he says yes, but not with his Quidditch Uniform!
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:
Don't you think that may be furthering the agenda?

What kind of father are you?:wink:

Haha!

The kind that is planning on dressing like dumbledore!!!
 
unico said:


i don't get what you are saying here...
it was unnecessary for her to honestly answer an honest question by an honest fan?

Answering your question:

She was asked if Dumbledore ever did find love. She answered with a "Oh, he's gay." Which I thought was unnecessary and seemed like she pulled it out of her ass at the last minute.
 
Dreadsox said:
Haha!

The kind that is planning on dressing like dumbledore!!!
You know, I was actually wryly thinking earlier that there will probably be quite a few parents returning Dumbledore costumes to Wal-Mart in a huff over this. Which would almost be funny, except that it's not.
 
BrownEyedBoy said:
She was asked if Dumbledore ever did find love. She answered with a "Oh, he's gay." Which I thought was unnecessary and seemed like she pulled it out of her ass at the last minute.

How did you interpret it as unnecessary and "pulled out of her ass?"

I mean, from her explanation, I think she'd thought this for a while.
 
phillyfan26 said:


How did you interpret it as unnecessary and "pulled out of her ass?"

I mean, from her explanation, I think she'd thought this for a while.


Quite a lot of time went by between each book's writing process and release. It wasn't brought it up then and I'm sure she had one of those Q&A's in between those years.
 
BrownEyedBoy said:


Answering your question:

She was asked if Dumbledore ever did find love. She answered with a "Oh, he's gay." Which I thought was unnecessary and seemed like she pulled it out of her ass at the last minute.

But where do you get this, "pulled out of her ass.." bit?

Can't you see how you make no sense in here? You never answer anything based on logic, just gut feelings.
 
There would never have been a reason to ask the question before book 7. Book 7 just came out a few months ago.
 
BrownEyedBoy said:
Quite a lot of time went by between each book's writing process and release. It wasn't brought it up then and I'm sure she had one of those Q&A's in between those years.

This was her first tour of North America since 2000.

Book 7 only came out recently.

The question was essentially, "Since it wasn't blatantly written in the books as such, does Dumbledore ever fall in love?" The form of that has to be after book 7.
 
phillyfan26 said:


This was her first tour of North America since 2000.

Book 7 only came out recently.

The question was essentially, "Since it wasn't blatantly written in the books as such, does Dumbledore ever fall in love?" The form of that has to be after book 7.

You're right the form of that particular question had to be after book 7. The form of the answer could've been in any question regarding Dumbledore.
 
BrownEyedBoy said:




She was asked if Dumbledore ever did find love. She answered with a "Oh, he's gay." Which I thought was unnecessary and seemed like she pulled it out of her ass at the last minute.

Not to be picky, but the transcript is as follows:

Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?

JKR: My truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.[ovation.] ... Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how i always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair... [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!" [laughter] "If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"

Doesn't seem to me like she pulled it out of her ass.
 
BrownEyedBoy said:
You're right the form of that particular question had to be after book 7. The form of the answer could've been in any question regarding Dumbledore.

The character had not developed to the point he had before Book 7, and she hadn't been on a tour to have questions asked of her like that before Book 7, so again ... no, it could not have.
 
ramblin rose said:


Not to be picky, but the transcript is as follows:

Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?

JKR: My truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.[ovation.] ... Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how i always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair... [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!" [laughter] "If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"

Doesn't seem to me like she pulled it out of her ass.


My opinion on that is that it's very convenient of her to say things like that.

The "ovation" part of the paragraph you quoted mirrors exactly what I'm against. I can't stand the sanctifying of homosexuals and how people applaud the fact that someone's gay. That is what bothers me. And before anyone even suggests it, let me say that I'm not saying that they should be frowned upon but this whole attitude of making homosexuality a "noble cause" should be seen just as ridiculously as viewing heterosexuality as a noble cause.

It's the attitude I'm against. The attitude of setting an example and throwing in here and there a gay character in a children's book for the sake of furthering tolerance.

So I stand by my post, children's books are not the adequate forum to address those issues.
 
By saying, "If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!" to me, seems to be the telling part, that she really hadn't thought about the reaction everyone would have.

But the key thing you're missing here, which I will capitalize to hopefully make you comprehend, is that SHE DIDN'T PUT HIM IN FOR THE SAKE OF FURTHERING TOLERANCE. If you've read the books, it MAKES SENSE THAT DUMBLEDORE IS GAY.
 
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