It started with the release of the latest movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and has been building steadily ever since. I suppose the climax was midnight Friday night at our local bookstore, waiting to pick up our copy of, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Right now Aaron and Kennedy are both wearing white Oxford shirts and ties they’ve scrounged from somewhere in my closet. For weeks now they’ve been waving around bits of wood, shouting out spells at one another. Yesterday morning, I got Aaron to bring me coffee in bed by waving my index finger and saying, “Accio Coffee!”
The kids started reading the series just this year.
It’s very satisfying to find Kennedy snuggled up with such big books. I’ve found Aaron working on some of the earlier (shorter) books in the series, too. I loved reading when I was a boy and am delighted to see such an interest in books. For my little athlete, Aaron, an interest in books helps to round him out. Although I’ve been a big fan of the series since book 1, Friday night was the first of the release night parties I attended. I finally got a sense for how big a deal Potter is for kids. For Kennedy, who loves to read, the Potter series offers a legitimacy in her interests with her peers that I never had as a child and would have been hard pressed to offer her as a father.
I am only about a quarter of the way through the last book and am trying to avoid spoilers. In what I think will turn out to be a huge miscalculation, we purchased the books on tape for the kids. These excellent tapes are entertaining, but the kids can listen to the story faster than I can find time to read.
My favorite movie was Alfonso Cuaron’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but the recent David Yates movie was a close second. My favorite book? I suppose it’s the next one to come out! I can’t wait until it’s my turn to read again. Even if this is the last of the Potter books, I still have two more movies coming to me.
Present Tense 
What an event Harry Potter is. I wonder if there are any, in this country anyway, who have not heard of HP?
I also wrote a blog post of my kids and this latest book. They are older than yours, so the comparison was interesting. Yours brought back memories.
Very cool. I have yet to read any of the HP series, so I must admit that the frenzy is not something that I can relate to personally. But, I know what it’s like to wait and wait and wait for something until you’re ready to burst! As you’ve seen with your children, the HP series is definitely something that is getting kids to read, which is great in my book 🙂
Very happy you’re writing about Harry too!;-)
[…] Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: The Potter movies are turning into a fine franchise and this one was probably my second favorite of the whole bunch. I find myself looking forward to them, even though I’ve read all the books and know the story. Imelda Staunton was deliciously wicked. […]
[…] Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: The Potter movies are turning into a fine franchise and this one was probably my second favorite of the whole bunch. I find myself looking forward to them, even though I’ve read all the books and know the story. Imelda Staunton was deliciously wicked. […]