This was one of my favourite books as a child, and it was a no-brainer to give it five stars, a rating I now reserve for the books I consider "life-changing." However, as an adult, I now have to drop a star. Let me explain.

This book changed my life because it taught me that I could beat the bad grown-ups in my life by becoming smarter than all of them and reading lots of books. This is a good thing to teach children.

It also taught me that when a teacher (or any other adult) discovers how intelligent and special you are, they will rescue you from your terrible life. This is not a good thing to teach children. It makes them very, very vulnerable for reasons that I will not make explicit.

I would still not deny any child the joy of reading this wonderful classic story, but I would be careful to unpack any problematic assumptions they may have made by talking about what they have read, as with any book.