Happy Birthday, Harry Potter! I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since J.K. Rowling brought you to life. I missed the 20th anniversary while I was on vacation.
Elayne and Aaron had the opportunity to go to the London Studio Tour when they visited the U.K. this spring. Aaron is a Harry Potter fan, so Elayne surprised him with the tickets. They took a ton of pictures and video for me. While my family was visiting Elayne, we had the opportunity to go through all of the videos. I could sit there and name every costume, prop, set, etc. Elayne looked at me at one point and said, “I wish that I was passionate about something to have that kind of knowledge about it.”
That had never occurred to me. I don’t know that I would say that I’m “passionate” about Harry Potter, but it will forever be one of my favorite things.
I jumped on the bandwagon a bit late. I borrowed the first book (in paperback) from a friend who thought Harry Potter was stupid. The second book was actually a gift to my sister, who also thought Harry Potter was stupid. After that, I purchased the third and fourth books (also in paperback). It was only the fifth book that I managed to be “on time” with the release dates. I pre-ordered whenever I could.
I had this process for reading the books. I would shut myself in my room, turn on one CD, and read the book. I can’t hear the first Backstreet Boys CD without thinking of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Deathly Hallows came out while I was on a church retreat. My parents lovingly picked it up for me at Barnes & Noble. That same day, we had picked up our newest puppy, Grace. I was torn between a book series I loved and the cutest golden retriever you had ever seen. At one point, my dad brought her into my room where I was reading and plopped her on my bed. I was terrified that she was going to pee on the bed, so I took a break.
What Harry Potter Achieved
As I think back, Harry Potter was one of the first successful series, both in book form as well as the movies. After it came Twilight, The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc. It was also the first (and only, in my opinion) to get away with turning the last book into two movies.
Harry Potter created a community. Because it was a series that lasted years, a lot of us grew up with Harry, Ron, & Hermione. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out in July 2005. I was just going into 8th grade. Hermione was dealing with those feelings of jealousy when Ron starts dating Lavender. That was relatable to all of us. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry has finally gotten someone in his life who is there for him, a parental replacement in Sirius Black. However, (#spoileralert) he loses him at the end of the book. Both Order of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince show Harry dealing with loss. Unfortunately, there are kids in the world going through the same thing.
Thank you, Harry Potter.
I’ll never be able to fully articulate just what this series did. I was always a big reader, but these books were my first “big reads”. I always took the Harry Potter quizzes for AR points, and I ended up winning a $100.00 gift card to Toys ‘R Us because of it. It’s probably one of my longer loves (after my family and dance), taking up most of my life.
There’s a lot of opinion of not sharing these kinds of stories with children. I’ll never be one to tell anyone how to parent, but I will say that I’m extremely excited for the opportunity to share such an amazing story with my future children.
