"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" (JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)
After eight months, Jack and I have finished reading aloud the entire Harry Potter series. It was a rainy, gray day yesterday--the perfect weather for a marathon read of the last 120 pages in book seven. Except for a bath break, we read from 5:00 to 11:00 straight.
Whew! It was a great ride! It made me laugh and it made me cry. It made Jack pull the covers over his head whenever someone snogged.
JK Rowling gave us so many great, complex characters to think about. She gave us lots of opportunities to talk about what it means to have courage, how we can make good choices even when it's hard or scary or counterintuitive, how there are consequences for our actions, and how we can gain wisdom through reflecting on our mistakes and changing our course.
And as Jack gets older, I expect I'll bring Harry Potter up every now and then. How we need to be careful about rushing to judgment about people when we don't know the whole story. How we need to be careful about how we gain and exercise power. How we need to understand that sometimes following the rules and doing the right thing are not always the same. How loving others makes all the difference in the world.
1 comment:
When my four sons were young I read aloud to them "the Hobbit". I had divorced their mother and couldn't afford to take them to movies or sports or the circus so we read books together and acted out our own plays.
Reading the Hobbit to them turned out to be something they have remembered for many years. It was much more memorable than going to a movie or watching a video.
I've never read any of the Harry Potter books.. but I think it's time I checked them out of the library and got started.
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