I've just looked at the preview (thanks for the tip-off) and straight away, I've spotted some eyebrow-raising statements.
European children's literature, 101: Pull No Punches with Punishments. A rule as old as the publishing industry, if not older. If you're writing a fantasy story and you're going to punish an errant sinner in it, then you have to make the punishment inventive, punitive, and memorable. Especially if it's a story for kids.
Roald Dahl's inventive punishments are tame compared to some of what the Brothers Grimm came up with. Think about it: how many under-5s don't know the story where the kids throw the wicked old witch into her own oven and roast her alive?! Even Enid Blyton wasn't averse to the odd display of glee at a bad 'un's come-uppance. Heaven forfend he should read anything by Robert Swindells, that's all I can say.
Making an issue out of "Eat dung, Potter"... deary me, I can only assume either he was home schooled or he's never, ever stepped foot in an English schoolyard. Even the girls' skipping rhymes when I was at junior school (ages 5-8, a couple of decades ago when swearing in public would've got you a clout around the mouth) were worse than that. I don't dispute the fact that moral standards in the playground are lamentable, but the worst profanities I ever heard uttered out loud at school, came from the mouths of parents picking their kids up. J K Rowling sidestepped that reality, by setting the kids' interactions in a closed school environment.
O'Brien seems to think she should've been tamer with her schoolyard vernacular... I think she went as far as was practical given the reading age of her intended readership.
The every-flavored beans thing O'Brien highlights as another example of inappropriate gross-out, is actually inspired by the wry (but perennial) observation that a selection box of chocolates or candy, invariably has at least one flavored confection in it, that nobody seems to like. Even our confectionery industry thinks it's funny (and probably true!) - which explains this recent TV advert for Revels.
So, the worst you can really say of J K Rowling here, is that she was telling a gag as old as the hills.
"While sexuality is not really an overt part of the novels, romance surely is." Got to say, this one's got me scratching my head. He's talking about things like hand holding, carrying books, kissing under the mistletoe (I can almost hear him screaming PAGAN RITE!!!), teens stammering in the presence of people of the opposite sex (who didn't?!) and the occasional innuendo. He also seems to be indicating that all this sort of rites-of-passage stuff would be fine in any context other than in a fantasy tale that has magic and violence in it. Sorry, I don't buy it.
But after all that, there's one thing that O'Brien says that I really, really cannot make any sense of. He picks on Moaning Myrtle.
Now, that might sound like a stupid thing to highlight, but come on. It's so bleeding obvious what she represents, and it's so bleeding obvious why nobody feels comfortable when Moaning Myrtle is around... Anyone who's grown up in a large family, or with a dodgy lock on the bathroom door, can see it. Anyone who's had that horrible sense of being spied on in the locker room, will get it.
Myrtle is the personification of the unwelcome hanger-on. The person who won't leave you alone. The person who follows you into the bogs to talk to you (Guys know there's something terribly wrong with that when it happens. Girls might go to the bathroom in pairs but at least it's usually by mutual consent). The person who thinks it's fine to use the loo while you're in the shower.
Are they really trying to be friendly? Are they trying to eye up your junk? Or are they just so self-absorbed that they don't realise that they're weirding you out? Or are they just winding you up? Why can't they just get a life?! Myrtle is a work of genius - because she's all of the above. She's every rest room nutjob in the world, and your annoying brother/sister invading your privacy while you're in the bath, all rolled into one. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but from what I've read so far, I feel drained. I'm not angry or upset, just astonished at how badly misinformed Mr O'Brien seems to be. At times it almost looks as if he's saying that even morality plays are evil if they've got magic or humour in them.
That said, I am stuck in a hotel room at the moment and maybe when I get a chance to read the whole thing, I'll see what it is that you're seeing.