Hello, hello, hello!
Did I ever mention how much I love to read? Yep. Nerd here. I’m reading ALL THE TIME. The story immerses me, I get lost in the
words, and the real world just disappears.
Seriously! You could sit next to me, and talk to me for 10 minutes
without me even knowing it. Pretty impressive since normally, I have an attention span like Dory, from Finding Nemo. I don’t
just read the words, though. It’s a
sensory experience for me. I see the
colorful scenes. I feel the water, the wind, the fabrics. I feel the emotions –
I have cried with a heartbroken character, my stomach drops when they receive
bad news, and I have actually laughed out loud in a crowded, quiet room because
something silly happened in the book. Some books I fly through, discard and
then I move on. Other books just have
that certain something.
I started reading the
Harry Potter books almost by accident. I
had just graduated from college, and we were temporarily living with my
mom. I was home alone with my
three-year-old son, who was napping. I had
finished my most recent book and I was searching the house for something else
to feed the reading monster inside of me.
I had already read all the books on my shelf, and on my mom’s
shelf. My sister was fifteen at the
time, so I knew the few books she had would be a bit young for me but I was
desperate. My favorite book genre is
fantasy, so when I saw Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer’s Stone I thought “Why not?”
It didn’t take long before I was totally hooked. An orphan is raised by his neglectful,
stuck-up, prejudiced family members.
Then someone comes along, tells him he has special powers and belongs to
a special community, and takes him away to a new a wonderful life. Seriously, you can’t tell me you’ve never
dreamed about someone coming to tell you that there’s been a mistake and all
this time there was a bigger, better, cooler life awaiting you? He
learns all about this new world and his powers, makes life-long friends and
discovers that he’s famous for accidentally destroying an evil villain when he
was just a baby. Oh, and there’s magic,
unicorns, goblins, elves, giants, broomsticks, dragons……. Ok, so the whole
series was written for children. Or at
least the first few books were. The first
book came out in 1998. Let’s assume an
8-year-old read the book when it first came out. By the time Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out in 2007, that kid was
17. I believe the books grew up alongside their
readers. The story gets a little more
grown-up, and a bit darker as the series goes on. Evil plots, murder, kidnapping, dating and
jealousy, love, loyalty, war and self-sacrifice. I went to midnight releases of the
books. I was at the midnight showings of
the movies. I now own all the books and
all the movies on DVD.
My son started reading the series in second grade. Up until then, he wasn’t really into
reading. We would prefer to sit in his
room building lego things, or climbing trees outside (I’m certainly NOT saying
either of those pastimes are BAD! Don’t think that. It was great!) I credit the
Harry Potter series with springboarding my son’s reading. Over the years, he and I have had long
discussions about various aspects of the story.
We’ve talked about dragons and house elves. We’ve discussed how awesome the Hogwarts
teachers are, which one is our favorite and why. We’ve looked up recipes for food dishes
mentioned in the books, and tried to make some (remind me to tell you about
Butterbeer! Yum!). He’s now 18 and we
STILL have in-depth conversations about things like which animal our wand core
might come from, and whether certain woods are more magical than others. We quote the books and movies in our everyday
conversations – a fact that irks my husband to no end. My daughter, who is 12, has recently joined our ranks. She read the first book last summer. I’m pretty sure it was the first book she
ever actually finished. She finished the
last one in February and has since read the
Hunger Games trilogy, the Chronicles
of Narnia series and 2 other series I can’t remember the names of. Another avid reader, credited to Harry
Potter.
Ok, so why did I just spend an entire blog rambling on and
on about my family’s Harry Potter obsession?
It was really a LONG introduction to my next post. Recently we decided to completely immerse
ourselves in the stories we love, and visit The
Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, Florida……and it was
AWESOME! And I want to share it with
you! Stay tuned! I’ll have the whole scoop, with pictures, in
my next blog update!! For now, I’ll
leave you with this link:
