Alternative to Harry Potter

When Harry Potter first came out I really tried to join the bandwagon. My sister bought me the first in the series and I looked forward to reading it. I expected some good wholesome literary fun. I was very disappointed. I got through 3 quarters of the book and finally had to put it down for good. From a purely literary stance I really thought the writing was weak, slow and unimpressive. It seemed this character stayed in one scene for chapters and chapters. I really tried, I did. And the one thing that was drawing me to it was the occult side, the "harmless" dark side. As a kid I loved everything about witches and magic. I wanted to make spells and potions. As I got older I still had the interest and dabbled, lightly, in white magic. So I really thought the Harry Potter series would appeal to me. I have other reasons now for not liking the Harry Potter movement. I'm told her writing has improved but I'm not willing to test those waters again. I now have 3 children and see in my middle boy an interest in anything action packed, violent, and dark. He writes stories that always has someone loosing their life. He also has a secret longing to experience the Harry Potter scene. But I can't, as a parent, introduce him to this potentially engaging aspect of the spiritual realm. I had to ask myself what else about Harry Potter bothered me. It is the fact that little boys and girls everywhere can now pretend to be wizards, warlocks and witches. They can playfully cast spells on each other and unlock a door to an unknown world. A world that seems harmless but can lead to path filled with confusion. I think the reason it's such a hit is that it is something tangible for people to grab onto. They want to instantly stop their pain or instantly bring forth goodness and riches. I thought casting spells would bring me the boy of my dreams, and I thought that using potions would protect me from evil and bad things. I may have been only playing but deep inside there was that hope that it would really work. I think all kids start out playing innocently enough then something inside of them starts to wish it was real for them. I'm not against good versus evil at all, I'm against using the occult for amusing my children.
I have, however found an alternative to the magical world for my children to ponder. I recently read Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. I originally got this book for my daughter to read while on vacation and recently picked it up myself and wasn't able to put it down till I finished it. My daughters book mark quickly was catching up with mine as she saw me getting excited as I read. The book ended up having a third book mark-my 7 year old boys who is just starting to read. I found the writing to not be insulting to the reader. It was thoughtful and stretched ones vocabulary. It wasn't predictable and left you almost skipping lines to get to the next page. I don't like fantasy but this was a world that was almost believable and that made it fun.
Here is a summary:
A father has the power to pull characters out of books when he reads aloud. He doesn't try to, it just happens. He was reading a book called Inkheart and ended up reading out a whole slew of bad characters that don't want to go back to their own world. So they make a world for themselves here. The fathers daughter ends up having the gift as well, and she is captured by the leader to read aloud to bring out a very nasty character to do some dirty work. Her mother had accidently been read back into the book 9 years earlier and became a prisoner of the leader. The author of the book is sought out to change the characteristics of the bad one that is being read out and in the end the village comes alive with trolls, fairies and little glass men. It's a great ending. It has snippets at the beginning of each chapter of other works of fiction. You'll meet Peter Pan and Tom Sawyer and others.
The only "magic" a child is going to emulate from this book is reading aloud and that's imaginative play I like to encourage. The book is about 500 pages long and it's the first of a trilogy. So basically this book has good guys, bad guys, street performers, fairies, trolls, suspense, tragedy and tastefully done literary magic.