Monday, June 23, 2003

Potter passes us by again

Alright, tell me the truth: Is mine positively the only family that is not bound and determined to plow our way through a certain 800+-page door-stop-sized novel this summer? Are we the only ones not wild about Harry? Is ours the only household over which the wand of Potter-mania has not passed? Honestly, even if my kids were interested in the boy wizard, I'm not sure I would let them go all gaga the way so many families seem to be -- keeping the kids up late to go to midnight book sales, jamming the aisles of Barnes and Noble to be the first to get their mitts on the massive thing, having slumber parties during which young guests read chapters instead of whisper secrets. I mean, really -- I'm happy that kids are excited about a book. But is it wise to teach children to hop so enthusiastically on so hype-driven a bandwagon?

Oh, who am I kidding. If my kids were capable of being into a big bold large-word-packed story like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I would be out camping in front of bookstore doors like the most kid-lit-minded mom on the block. But the books are so far over the heads of my language- and reading-delayed kiddos that I've got to salvage a little superiority somewhere. My daugher was so traumatized by a fourth-grade assignment of the first Harry Potter tome that she doesn't want to see the book or see the movie or even hear that magical name. We're a regular broomstick no-fly zone. And ... um ... we meant to be that way.

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