A few questions about Harry Potter shared before the Red Mud Study Group on Sunday

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Ava­da Kedavra is the most evil curse in the wiz­ard­ing world, yet Har­ry Pot­ter is the only one who sur­vived it. Why? How does this relate to Aslan’s res­ur­rec­tion in the Nar­nia sto­ry? How does this relate to “If You Don’t Tell, It Will Be Too Late”? And how does this relate to Chen Xuan­zang’s slight lack of suc­cess in “Jour­ney to the West: Con­quer­ing the Demons”?

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The over­all struc­ture and many details of Har­ry Pot­ter’s sto­ry are inex­tri­ca­bly linked to ancient mythol­o­gy. Can you iden­ti­fy these con­nec­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with Gre­co-Roman mythol­o­gy? What does the Mir­ror of Erised sym­bol­ize? Why was the Philoso­pher’s Stone placed in a mag­ic mir­ror for safe­keep­ing?

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Har­ry Pot­ter’s aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance at wiz­ard­ing school was prob­a­bly above aver­age, far infe­ri­or to Hermione’s. Why did he always take on the big respon­si­bil­i­ties? Was it sim­ply the author’s choice? Why did even Hermione think he was a bet­ter wiz­ard than her­self?

Is read­ing fan­ta­sy works like Har­ry Pot­ter tru­ly ben­e­fi­cial to chil­dren’s devel­op­ment? Is this type of read­ing more about vent­ing, or is it about gain­ing nour­ish­ment? How should we approach and guide this?