Wednesday, July 13, 2011
How do you write a new best seller after Harry Potter?--saying goodbye to a generation of book readers.
Sure maybe there will be re-runs and re-reads. But this is the last day of that “pins and needles” anticipation, movie marathon, book roundup--waiting for the final episode of the final book.
I speak not as a radical HP fan, not as an avid reader of the 7-book series, but as the mother of an 18 and 15-year-old whose childhoods were defined by J.K. Rowlings’ famous nerdy protagonist. And I find myself reflecting as a bystander, a fan-by-proximity. And what’s more...I find myself feeling rather nostalgic.
It began earlier this evening, when I took a break from the 7-movie marathon going on downstairs to look through Target ads for extra-long college sheets, and bottles of Tide and dry-erase dorm boards, and it occurred to me that my daughter, and the class of 2011, is heading off to college exactly as Harry wraps up his final quest on the big screen. And for me, there’s something sad and poignant in it--because I think we may have just seen the graduation of the last generation of kids that read books. I mean real, live, hard-bound, 700-page paper books.
I wonder how many other moms have chuckled this week watching their grown kids lie in the hammock in the sun and re-read (no re-read is too mild) re-DEVOUR books 6 and 7 so every detail over every Horcrux can be fresh. As I listen to the voice of Richard Harris give way to Michael Gambon rumbling up from the basement, I wonder how many other families are running a 7-movie marathon tonight. My kids started somewhere around lunchtime and it will be around midnight by the time they’re done. Only nowadays they can drive their own friends home--no more tent in the backyard with an extension cord to the laptop or Ariel and Belle sleeping bags.
Years ago, three little kids rode a train to Hogwarts and stole my daughters’ hearts. Today, like time-lapse photography. they’ll watch Daniel and the gang transform from 10-year-olds into 19-year-olds in a span of less than 12 hours.
It’s like Slughorn’s fish--poof! It’s gone. It’s like magic of the worst kind. And tonight I can hardly bear it.
Tomorrow we'll probably set up our soccer chairs at the movie theater shortly after noon and wait in line with the hundreds of other fans who have come to see the last big-screen appearance of their childhood heroes.
This will be the fourth midnight showing of Harry Potter for me. Last time the temperature was merely a few degrees above freezing as we hunkered down with blankets, hats, and mittens in line waiting for the Deathly Hallows Part I.
So why do I go to midnight book and movie releases and sit through 10 hours of Harry Potter re-runs?
Because saying goodbye to Harry Potter will signal the end to an era at our house. The end to four-person family dinners and movies; school projects and homework marathons; the end to days when girls could talk to cats, dressed up from a box of old clothes in the basement, built secret forts in the cedar trees behind the house and laid beside the pool with a two-pound novel inches away from their faces reading and reading and reading again.
I wonder how long J.K Rowling grieved after she set down her pen having written that final scene on the platf
orm. And I wonder if, sometime soon, she will pick her pen back up and begin a new story. It couldn't be easy after such incredible success, and you couldn’t really blame her if she never tried.
But I know one thing for sure. You can guarantee that after I give that final wave through the back windshield of the car as we pull away from the college, that as soon as the tears dry, I'll start scribbling on the next series of my life. Because if there’s one thing I’m a fan of...it’s of life... and of my daughters who have made it the best, best-seller ever.
 |
| When the Harry Potter Children grow all the way up. |
Tonight...July 13, 2011. Mark it on your calendars. Why? Because this is the last night of life as we knew it. Tomorrow night at around 3 a.m. begins a new era: life without Harry Potter.
Sure maybe there will be re-runs and re-reads. But this is the last day of that “pins and needles” anticipation, movie marathon, book roundup--waiting for the final episode of the final book.
I speak not as a radical HP fan, not as an avid reader of the 7-book series, but as the mother of an 18 and 15-year-old whose childhoods were defined by J.K. Rowlings’ famous nerdy protagonist. And I find myself reflecting as a bystander, a fan-by-proximity. And what’s more...I find myself feeling rather nostalgic.
It began earlier this evening, when I took a break from the 7-movie marathon going on downstairs to look through Target ads for extra-long college sheets, and bottles of Tide and dry-erase dorm boards, and it occurred to me that my daughter, and the class of 2011, is heading off to college exactly as Harry wraps up his final quest on the big screen. And for me, there’s something sad and poignant in it--because I think we may have just seen the graduation of the last generation of kids that read books. I mean real, live, hard-bound, 700-page paper books.
She was only in third grade when that Troll Book order arrived with her first Harry Potter novel--The Sorcerer’s Stone--a monster of a book with an innocuous looking little wimp in glasses on the front cover.
I told her she would have to wait for me to read it to see if it was okay for her to read--“not too creepy or Satanic” I think I have said back then.
But I never got around to reading it. And doggone if that little skunk didn’t just go ahead and read it anyway.
And that's it--she was hooked. And a year later she had her little sister hooked. And by the time the fourth book in the series came out, I found myself elbowing through a giant crowd at Borders Books at 11 p.m. on a school night in order to the be among the very first to get The Half-blood Prince when it was released at midnight.
That’s what moms do, isn’t it? You take your kids to the things they love, and I couldn’t help but grin and watch, baffled, as they hammered away fact, after fact in the Harry Potter Trivia contest. I mean, who else knows that Dumbledore’s full name contains something as peculiar as Albus Wolfrick Percival something or other? Well...Harry Potter fans, that’s who. My kids, that’s who. In fact, “fan” just doesn’t do it justice. These are children who feel as though Albus is their grandfather and Harry is a brother. (Ron and Jenny have a mum and dad, so they’re more like cousins) but Hermoine and Harry--they’re just part of the family.
That’s what moms do, isn’t it? You take your kids to the things they love, and I couldn’t help but grin and watch, baffled, as they hammered away fact, after fact in the Harry Potter Trivia contest. I mean, who else knows that Dumbledore’s full name contains something as peculiar as Albus Wolfrick Percival something or other? Well...Harry Potter fans, that’s who. My kids, that’s who. In fact, “fan” just doesn’t do it justice. These are children who feel as though Albus is their grandfather and Harry is a brother. (Ron and Jenny have a mum and dad, so they’re more like cousins) but Hermoine and Harry--they’re just part of the family.
I wonder how many other moms have chuckled this week watching their grown kids lie in the hammock in the sun and re-read (no re-read is too mild) re-DEVOUR books 6 and 7 so every detail over every Horcrux can be fresh. As I listen to the voice of Richard Harris give way to Michael Gambon rumbling up from the basement, I wonder how many other families are running a 7-movie marathon tonight. My kids started somewhere around lunchtime and it will be around midnight by the time they’re done. Only nowadays they can drive their own friends home--no more tent in the backyard with an extension cord to the laptop or Ariel and Belle sleeping bags.
And here’s the thing--tonight it’s the same thing for me. Tonight it feels like it’s only been a matter of hours. One morning I woke up and a third-grader was sneaking Harry Potter under the covers with a flashlight at night. In less than a month, I’ll be sending an 18-year-old away to college praying that Harry Potter is the worst thing she'll ever sneak.
Tomorrow we'll probably set up our soccer chairs at the movie theater shortly after noon and wait in line with the hundreds of other fans who have come to see the last big-screen appearance of their childhood heroes.
This will be the fourth midnight showing of Harry Potter for me. Last time the temperature was merely a few degrees above freezing as we hunkered down with blankets, hats, and mittens in line waiting for the Deathly Hallows Part I.
I've actually read that one, and the one before that--I owed it to my girls. And, sure, I like them just fine. But the truth is I’m never going to be one of the real fans--the truly passionate, obsessive, trivia-memorizing readers of Harry Potter. I’m not.
So why do I go to midnight book and movie releases and sit through 10 hours of Harry Potter re-runs?
Because there are two girls in this house who ARE the real deal. Because Harry Potter has been part of shaping their entire childhood existence. He and Ron and Hermione have grown up with them like neighborhood kids, and I’ve been like the mom who watched out the kitchen window while they played.
I was there when Harry grinned and climbed on the back of Hagrid's motorbike, and I will be there when he goes to the train station to say goodbye to his own kids. And then, poof, just like that it will be done. And life will move on in a new way.
I love Harry Potter with all my heart because I have delighted watching my girls delight in these fanciful, fantastical novels with all my heart. And when those closing credits start to roll and hear that final theme music, I know I'll be bawling like a baby.
Because saying goodbye to Harry Potter will signal the end to an era at our house. The end to four-person family dinners and movies; school projects and homework marathons; the end to days when girls could talk to cats, dressed up from a box of old clothes in the basement, built secret forts in the cedar trees behind the house and laid beside the pool with a two-pound novel inches away from their faces reading and reading and reading again.
I wonder how long J.K Rowling grieved after she set down her pen having written that final scene on the platf
orm. And I wonder if, sometime soon, she will pick her pen back up and begin a new story. It couldn't be easy after such incredible success, and you couldn’t really blame her if she never tried.
But I know one thing for sure. You can guarantee that after I give that final wave through the back windshield of the car as we pull away from the college, that as soon as the tears dry, I'll start scribbling on the next series of my life. Because if there’s one thing I’m a fan of...it’s of life... and of my daughters who have made it the best, best-seller ever.
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