My 4th grade teacher read us The Hobbit in school, and a couple years later I found and read an illustrated version of the whole book, which I loved, though I have no idea what may have happened to it over the years. I’m sure my boys would have loved it. I have attempted to read it to my boys, but we found the pacing very slow. Today’s kids don’t always have the attention span for that style of writing, and while we try, I think it would help to opt for the audio version of the slower books and play them while engaged in other tasks. When my boys were younger that was often while eating lunch or clearing up after supper, or even folding laundry.
As for Fantasy for a 10 year old, more current stuff might include Peter Nimble and the Fantastic Eyes, and the sequel Sophie Quire were good – not high fantasy (kinghts, kings, queens etc) but fantastical without being too dark. One Hundred Cupboards and the two books that follow it were good, (those would also have darker elements that The Chronicles of Narnia, which is very tame). Although more humorous adventure than fantasy, The Very Nearly Honourable League of Pirates books are a fun read for both boys and girls.
As for Harry Potter and the rest — it really depends on your personal convictions. We have read them all (my older son and I) several years ago, and enjoyed them, but he is not the type to get “wrapped up” in the “wizarding world”. My younger son is a little different, and we haven’t read them. We’ve also read Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson novels, etc, and I am not at all impressed by his newer works. I have found reading the “controversial” books with my kids (even at 16 and 13) allows me to 1) know what they are reading, 2)make “edits” when necessary, 3) have conversations about the believes, actions and thoughts of both the characters in the story and the author that might be contrary to our own. We can talk about how God’s truth tells us something very different than what the author is portraying at times, and what the consequences of those false beliefs are.
