Apparently amidst much trumpeting and heraldic fanfares the most recent (and final) addition to J K Rawlings 'Harry Potter' book series will be released at midnight tonight.
Of course every bookshop worth it's salt is opening it's doors then so as to let hordes of otherwise illiterate children press through into it's premises, deposit copious amounts of cash and buy this latest story.

I admit to having lost interest around the 'Goblet of Fire' point, my own issue having lain in it's Amazon box, recumbent and un-read until I needed a box of suitable size to post something I'd sold on Ebay.

However, whilst I find it moderately laudable that some children (and many adults) have at least found this author's work worthy of consumption, I find something about the release of the new book quite disturbing.

It seems that J K Rowling has admitted that one/some of the story's regular characters will die. I have no problem with that. It's not reality after all and heroes and villains often get the chop. The story would tend toward the boring otherwise.

However Child Line has employed extra staff to deal with an envisaged flood of disturbed children who are worried that it may be Harry Potter himself who pops his clogs.

Perhaps this is proof that many children are blissfully unaware of the distinction between reality and fiction.
I am not necessarily citing the video game generation argument here but it does make one wonder.

Children are not allowed to compete against each other in case it causes feelings of inadequacy. Examinations are increasingly dumbed down (despite governmental words of reassurance).
Real life doesn't appear to come into many of these children's lives until they leave school in case it gives them traumatic references for later life.
Then, unable to string a sentence together they (might) attempt to enter the employment world and instead find themselves floating along excretion creek in a barbed wire canoe without a paddle, blaming everyone but themselves.

I question what sort of generation of children we are siring if society feels there's a need for qualified counselors to help people through the death of a fictitious character from a children's book.

Will the next generation have any idea where reality ends and fiction begins at all? Thank god I'm old and probably wont be around to see that disaster when it strikes.