What didn’t you like about them?
Spencer, age 14: I started reading the first book, and it was interesting until he got to the school. Then nothing happened for a long time.
So you were bored. Anything else?
She [J. K. Rowling] overdescribes too much stuff. When Harry Potter was battling Voldemort on the back of the teacher’s head, she went on way too much about how he looked like a snake. The book could have been a hundred pages shorter.
You recently tried the second book, didn’t you?
Yeah. It was pretty good, but I stopped reading it because I was reading another book [The Dark Half, by Stephen King]. I’m going to pick it up again to see if it’s okay.