My Harry Potter Journey

It's been 20 years since the first Harry Potter book was published in the UK. Sooo even though I'm sure I'll be talking about Harry for his birthday in July and again for the epilogue day in September, I'm going to take this opportunity as an excuse to talk about him. (Like I needed an excuse.)

My journey with Harry began in July 2000. A few weeks earlier, my parents had picked up their family of four daughters and moved us all from one part of Hometown to another. Everyone adjusted well to the move...except me. I had an extremely difficult time with it. I, uh, might have written all over the walls in the rented house we were leaving...maybe.

So my mom, demonstrating that she understood the needs of her young daughter, bought me a Beanie Baby and a book at a sidewalk sale. I was thrilled. I felt like these gifts almost made up for the fact that my parents had uprooted my life and forced me to move a whole three miles.

Well, okay, I was thrilled with the Beanie Baby. The Beanie Baby was actually a plush Beanie Baby named Franny. She was dressed in a very patriotic red, white, and blue dress. I wasn't sure about the book...Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

I wasn't sure about this book because first of all, the cover was real weird. I did not like the illustration style at all. Also, my mom had tried to talk to me about the book in a parking lot a few weeks before.

MOM: I've heard this Harry Potter book is really good!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I've already read that book! It wasn't that good.

MOM: Really?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Yeah. It's a picture book about a weird old farmer with a balloon farm.

MOM: That doesn't sound like what I'm talking about...

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Didn't you say Harvey Potter?

MOM: No, I said Harry Potter.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Oh. Okay.

(It still didn't sound that good.)

Anyways, a few weeks after that sidewalk sale, I sat down with that book, and I started reading it. It was a rough one, I tell you. The beginning wasn't that interesting. It wasn't that interesting and it wasn't that interesting and then when Hagrid arrived it was kind of interesting and then when Harry met Ron it was very interesting and then by the time they were heading out for the wizarding duel I was hooked. (J. K. Rowling has said many times herself that she's not great at beginnings. The slow beginning was also a problem in Fantastic Beasts, in my opinion, but that's neither here nor there.)

And that was that. In July 2000, I started Hogwarts with Harry.

In July 2007, amid many tears, Harry and I finished our seven (literal and metaphorical) years together.

My attachment to Harry Potter far outweighs nostalgia. For one thing, I've reread the books many times, and I'm always amazed at J. K. Rowling's talent. Some people like to say that J. K. Rowling's writing technique is not good, but I couldn't disagree more. There are many different styles of good writing. We all have our personal preferences, but just because you don't like a particular style doesn't mean it's not good. J. K. Rowling will never be a great prose writer, but she really excels at building worlds and characters with a few well-placed words. She also has quite a talent for dialogue. When I'm working on a novel, I often reread the Harry Potter series to get inspiration from her style.

For another thing, it's a joyous journey. I love this world. I love these characters. I think that Ron is a particularly complicated and interesting character, as is Luna. People have a tendency to reduce both of them to caricatures, but let me tell you, they would be tough to write as well as they are. Hermione is also quite complicated, although not in the way they chose to portray her in the movies. (Harry's not very complicated...bless him.)

Finally, there are loads of philosophical and religious moral lessons to glean from the books. I'm not joking when I say that these books have helped me understand my religion better. My parents (who started reading the books a few years later, once I'd finally convinced Older Sister to push past the first few chapters of the first book and she'd gotten really into the series, too) felt like the books were actually great religious teaching tools. They said that they wanted us to read them because they showed a clear difference between right and wrong. (If anyone's interested, I could write a whole post about the religious aspects of Harry Potter, but I won't bore you right now.)

I'm proud to be a member of the Harry Potter generation. My generation is fractured in our beliefs, but here we have common ground. For instance, I'm pretty we all agree that knowing one's Hogwarts house is very important. Surely we can build off of that shared belief! I look forward to the day when we use principles from Harry Potter to guide our political and ethical discussions.

Long live the Boy Who Lived, and thanks, Harry, for all the magic.