This series follows an approach to slipping in content that should be very familiar to Christian parents at this point. This particular scheme waits until a series gets very popular and, much later, slowly, but surely slips things in. While we have not completed a thorough review of the entire series, we have read and verified the following content below after being warned by a concerned parent.
In “Weather or Not” (book 5 of the series), a good portion of the plot revolves around the story of a hero from the past who heroically saved the town. However, quite a bit later in the story we are told the related story of her female “partner”. When the young child being told the story says, “partner?” the adult replies, “yes, her life companion”. Later we are told how both “settled down” together in the town. Also, strangely in this book, we noticed a group of students have a presentation topic of “single-sex education”.
In “The Big Shrink” (book 6) we meet a kid named Rainey at a party. They are described as a “tall non-binary boy”. As we have seen in previous books that attempted to desensitize kids to this unbiblical view of gender, the rest of the references consist of super-confusing references and grammar, such as referring to this child in the singular using words that make no sense like “they sank into a chair” and when Rainey “opened up their hands”. We also noticed that this story uses the term “fart” and “farting” over and over. The kids also launch into a huge protest against the leadership of the school when the toys that the students have become obsessed over are banned during school hours.
In “Night Owl” (book 8) we all of a sudden find out that Sebastian has “two dads”. Early there is a comment that “his dads were great”. One he refers to as “dad” and the other he refers to as “Baba”.
This feels a lot like how network TV and then later Disney tried to slowly desensitize adults and then children to this type of non-biblical views of love/marriage and gender. It really makes us brokenhearted thinking about the very young readers of this series.
We don’t think there is much else to say (see our thoughts in the next section), but for completeness we will share potentially concerning content specific to this first title:
The main item to consider will be around magic. Here the magic is “lighter” and doesn’t revolve around fighting/violence like in other series, but it is obviously a core focus of the series.
At one point Rory’s “upside-down” powers cause a huge mess and destruction to her father’s office. Her older brother says they should lie and blame it on their other sister’s rabbits. She asks about being honest, but he tells her they don’t want father mad at her before a big upcoming test. She concludes, “Some lies are safer than the truth”, a terrible takeaway for kids.
This is followed by a few other similar acts of deception (brother and sister completely disregarding their father’s order to not call Rory, Rory lying to get out of tricky situations).
A couple other items:
We hear of a male nurse who wears unicorn scrubs.
A girl mentions that her grandparent let her watch as much TV as she wants, calling it a good thing.