Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Gosh, Harry Potter has been so much a part of our family’s life over the last decade. We started listening to them on tape in 2002 when Irene was not yet 3. When we got into our mini-van, she would demand, “Hally Potter.”

I read the girls all the books, even though both children occasionally had nightmares. We also listened to all the books on tape, even though at times, I turned around, and Irene aged 3 or 4, would be crying, with her hands over a years when Voldemort spoke in hissing tones.

We pre-ordered each book, and I read them all the day they arrived, and then read each one to the kids. They have read them numerous times. I remember the fever of excitement before each arrived, and reading news of the leaks on the net.

We have seen each movie at the theatre the weekend it was released. It’s one of our durable family traditions.

I love the Harry Potter books–characters so real, characters you care about. A gorgeous mish-mash of mythology, languages, history like Narnia. Intricate plots. Brilliant interlinking. I love reading them with bated breath and suspense. I love re-reading them.

J.K. Rowling was a competent student, who went to Essex ( i.e. she was not among the .5 percent of the population who goes to Oxbridge) and wrote these as an unemployed mum (at first!). It makes you wonder how much unrecognised talent there is.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

Thomas Gray

Wikio

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