Teen Entertainment: Hermione as a Role Model

Hermione is a godsend in the world of Melissa de la Cruz books that tweens are reading, with titles like “Hot Au Pairs”. Mothers who’s kids are reading Harry Potter should count their blessings that their daughters (and sons!) have Hermione to examine and look up to. Ms. Hermione is a gutsy girl who learns to figure out her way around boys and society in a private school and a group of misfits that includes she, Harry and Ron. She learns to use her intelligence — and learns how and when to use it. Her feelings for the boys are appropriate and not overtly sexual like so many characters kids see today in books, movies and on television.

There is an emphasis on education in this book, and the students respect their school and find ways to work around the rough spots that all kids have at school and in life. Rowlings’ characters navigate economic differences between their friends and families and the different kinds of families, a theme that many tweens and teens wrestle with as they go out into the world and try to figure out where they belong and how to rationalize their feelings about their families and other families of their friends and peers.

Unlike Harriet The Spy, Hermione is not a loner. She is part of a social group — a healthy developmental step in relationships and individuation. And unlike the Judy Blume characters, the Rowlings characters are not all about puberty, physical changes, sex and sexuality.

The Harry Potter series is an asset to the world of literature and to all children who choose to read the books. And to parents, too!