YOU can’t say we hadn’t been warned: A much-loved character at Hogwarts does die in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” – and the fallout on the home front may not be pretty.
The sixth and newest installment of J.K. Rowling’s sprawling saga, which just hit stores Saturday at midnight, already has some children reeling from the book’s climactic scene – like a 9-year-old girl from Philly who, having spent the day devouring the book, became so distraught that her parents left their own dinner party to comfort her.
And that’s not such a bad thing, therapists say.
“One of the benefits of children’s books – fairy tales and the like – is that they provide children with a chance to work through the difficult things in life without actually experiencing them themselves,” says Dr. Kerry Sulkowicz, a New York psychiatrist and father of two Potter fans, ages 8 and 12.
“While it’s upsetting seeing a kid become distraught, it does give parents a chance to talk to their children about what they’ve been reading, and to assure them that this is fiction.”
Certainly, death is nothing new in children’s literature and films- as he and others are quick to point out.
“Disney has been doing this for years,” says Dr. Elena Lister, a child psychiatrist in Manhattan.
It helps, she says, to know how your child is likely to handle it – something that isn’t always determined by age.
“There are some children age 8 who’d have nightmares over ‘101 Dalmations’ and Cruella DeVille, and then there are 5-year-olds who see ‘Star Wars’ and don’t blink an eye,” she says.