Book Review: Harry Potter 哈利波特

Ages: 6.75 & 9.75
Suitable for 4th grade and up.

Updated:  Aug 2019

I don’t think people need me to review such a well known series like Harry Potter.  This post is more about how we’ve used it, Chinese translation of Harry Potter, where to find the resources, and where they fit in the scheme of learning Chinese.

If you’re impatient, skip to my point.

How We Read Harry Potter

The first 3 books of HP are kind of innocent and young, the 4th is when they discovered the opposite sex, and subsequent ones get darker and darker in theme.  I thought the kids would get more out of it if they slowly read HP.  So in our household, they can read 1 book a year starting from Age 7. 

An added bonus is that it allows us to re-read the Chinese version every single year.  HP Chinese is actually pretty high level so re-reading helps them recognize new characters every year.  It’s a well written book and Thumper can quote passages in English, which I like because it’s 

This rule is not a hard rule.   Astroboy was on a roll with HP so I allowed him to read book 3 at age 8.  Once Thumper passed book 5, I let her read book 6 & 7 since she was a tweenager by then and asking philosophical questions, which matched some of the themes raised in the latter books.  

But this means that she was over her obsession of HP early and she’s no longer interested in re-reading the Chinese versions.  Sad as she would benefit from reading this level of Chinese the older she got.

Reading Order

This is the order for both kids:

• HP 1 in Chinese with zhuyin
• HP 1 Chinese audiobook
• HP 1 movie in Chinese
• HP 1 English audiobook
• HP x in Chinese without zhuyin
• HP x Chinese audiobook
• HP x Chinese movie
• HP x English audiobook
• HP x English book

As you can see, we really kind of beat HP to death.   That’s why I’m writing a post about it!   We get a lot out of this series doing it this way.  

There’s nothing wrong with starting the kids earlier on the Chinese audiobooks first if their interest in adventure and magical stories happen before 5th grade and they don’t have the reading ability.   Any way to get them exposed to the language is alright.  Just be prepared when they won’t read that set of Harry Potter Chinese you bought after they’ve listened to the audiotapes and read the English version.

What Age Can You Start HP?

I know that many kids read HP in English in first grade if they are early readers.  But I pegged this at 4th grade as that’s when zhuyin is taken out of most books in Taiwan.  But I think typically this is in 5th and 6th grade reading lists.  Kids will read it earlier if they’re avid readers of course.  But reading level-wise it may be more upper elementary.

If Reading 123 is where you’d like the kids to be by the time they reach the end of second grade, I think the next level would be the first 4 books of Harry Potter by the time they reach 6th grade.  Even better if they can read all 7 books by 6th grade.  If they can read a high level non-zhuyin book by then and comprehend it, they’re all set!

It’s not the reading that’s important, it’s comprehending what they’re reading, without your help.  

That said, your child probably can read the first 3 books in 3rd grade or around age 8 or 9 if they know enough characters.  I didn’t make Astroboy read HP1 like I pushed it onto Thumper.  Learned my lesson that comprehension is more important with her.  But Astroboy wanted to so I gave it to him.  

Not only is the reading level higher, but the books are long.  It took around 3 chapters for the plot to really move in HP 1.  So, to help them along, that first book can be read with an adult or reading tutor.  Or, if you’re Astroboy, having your sister tell you that you just have to plow through the first 3 chapters before it gets better really helped him stay with the book.

Typically if your kid can understand HP 1, then the zhuyin is just to help them with characters they don’t know.  By book 2 they should be able to read it by themselves. 

My kid isn’t interested…..

If, by book 2, they aren’t interested, it means either the content or the Chinese characters are too hard for them.  That happened with Bebe.  She was capable of reading non-zhuyin books when she read HP at age 7.5.  But she wasn’t interested in continuing.  However, about 1-1.5 year later, she was ready and picked up HP again. 

Same thing happened with Thumper.  I showed it to her around 8, when she first started reading.  She was not interested.  By 9, she’d read enough books to be used to long book formats and zoomed through the finished the first 3 books before we stopped due to our 1 book a year rule.

Lastly with Astroboy, I just let his interest follow because I’d learned from watching Bebe and Thumper that there is no hurry if the kids are consistently reading Chinese books and making progress in comprehension.  It is just a matter of age and maturity.  So he picked up stopped after book 1 for awhile before picking it again himself months later when he sister was in HP mode.

HP Versions

I spent several weeks Googling and painstakingly downloading Harry Potter in Chinese.  In the process, I learned about the different versions out there and why the translations are what they are.

Here are the versions of Harry Potter I know of:

1. Traditional Chinese published by Crown Books (皇冠)
2. Simplified Chinese published by People’s Literature Publishing (人民文學出版社)
3. Web translated version on Haodoo (好讀)
4. Web translation on b111 (雲台書屋)
5. Audiobooks narrated by 李慧敏 from China National Radio (中央人民廣播電台)
6. Youtube narration of first book with subs! 

1. Harry Potter Traditional Chinese

In the US, kids sometimes as young as 7 or 8 can read Harry Potter, definitely by 3rd grade.  In traditional Chinese, it’s more of a 5th or 6th grade book, through middle school.  In my Googling I learned that when Crown Books had to translate the books, they had to decide what book series they would put these under.  Ultimately they decided it would be part of the adult Choice series!

Aha!  So this is why the translator, (did you know she’s the wife of the famous Jimmie Liao 幾米?) used much more advanced vocabulary than the English version.  It makes so much sense to me now why it’s an upper elementary book.

2. Harry Potter Simplified Chinese

The audiobooks are based on the simplified Chinese version of Harry Potter.  IMO, both this version and the Haodoo version use a simpler language more suitable for younger children.

Thumper will likely finish listening to the simplified abridged audiobooks, then either choose to read the Kindle books or the physical traditional Chinese version I bought when I was pregnant with her.  Yes, I am a little crazy.

3. Web translation by Haodoo

The only version on Haodoo that has been “edited” is the first book.  I’m conjecturing from the explanation that they got these books from online simplified translations.  Then they re-edited it so that it uses the names from traditional Chinese version, then changed some wordings so it sounds more like Chinese used in Taiwan and fixed translation mistakes.

The rest of the series you can’t easily find on Haodoo’s listing of available books unless you search for them.

I downloaded all 7 last year and while Thumper was reading book 1, I tried doing some massive search and replace in Calibre for book 2 and 3 so that they use the same character names as in the first book before converting them to Kindle format.  That did not go so well because there are so many names!

Honestly, by the time Astroboy read them, I learned that I only need to provide zhuyin with the first book.  And if your kid can’t read the book 2+ without zhuyin, really these books aren’t their level.

4. Web translation on b111 (雲台書屋)

This is a crappy version, at least by the first few paragraphs of the first book that I read.  They drastically condensed the first few paragraphs into a few sentences.  It’s in traditional.  But crappy!

5. Audiobooks narrated by 李慧敏

Even though there are other audiobooks out there, I ended up downloading all 7 as narrated by this woman so that the voice is consistent across the books.  It was very painful looking for it online and downloading hundreds of tracks one by one.  On a side note, you won’t find this on 喜馬拉雅 Ximalaya because they’re cracking down on copyrighted content.

I first found it on Lizhi.fm 荔枝FM, but it had missing audio files, misnamed tracks, and completely unusable book 7, which I later found on 有聲中國 YSCN8.com.

You can just google 哈利波特 李慧敏 and many websites will pop up with her audiobooks for download.

After Thumper listened to English book 3 for the 3rd time, she moved on to the Chinese versions.  She’s been similarly obsessed with these books the last few days.  Thank goodness.  I was afraid she was going to start talking about Harry Potter all in English at the rate she was going.

That is really the reason to read Harry Potter.  Most children will read it once in English.  For Thumper to even discuss the books with me, when we only speak Chinese to each other, means that I need to provide her with the Chinese vocabulary.  It’s very easy to switch completely to English when you just don’t have the vocabulary to express your thoughts relevant to your daily lives.

One thing to note, these audiobooks take a LOT of liberties with the books.  Whole sections are chopped off and words changed.  She also has this way of pronouncing the character names that is really jarring, as if she’s a non-native speaker trying to speak Chinese and getting the tones mixed up, OR a native Chinese speaker speaking English with a Chinese accent.

6. Youtube narration of 1st book with subs!

While updating this post, I looked for newer versions of audiobooks and found one online that has English and simplified subs!  It’s not complete though, only up to chapter 16 of first book.  But it’s great if you want to listen and read along.