My wife is an english teacher (6th grade) and highly approves of HP. I have read all the books at least once, as has my wife. My youngest son (now 14) has read them more times than I care to count. He read book 6 in about 6 hours. The books are no worse than much other material available and in fact as noted earlier, have morality plays in them and place great valve on most virtues. HP has done more to get kids reading than anything else since TV hit the mainstream I think. Most kids are a lot smarter than we think and can handle the fantasy/reality issue quite well. Personally, I can't wait for the final book. I hope it is 1000 pages.
Now about the newest movie. The three of us went to see it Friday night. I expected to enjoy it and did. That being said, I was also very disappionted in the movie. I thought a lot of the camera work was poor, but we are stuck with it. The editing was very choppy and really hurt the picture. I understand that there was actually more than an hour of film that they did not use because they wanted to keep the movie short. That was such a big mistake. I think they should recall the film and re-edit it to include most of the deleted parts. One of the LOTR movies went over 3 hours 20 minutes. People sat thru that and enjoyed it. I suspect it had more to do with keeping theater owners happy. Shorter move for same price equals more profit (less man hours for crews).
A final note: I think my wife actually has JKR's atugraph on one of her HP books. Got it at an English teachers conference in NYC one year. You know those english teachers--Rowdy bunch!