The Harry Potter Series

A couple of years ago I started reading the Harry Potter series out loud with my daughter. We finished just in time for Harry Potter’s birthday on July 31 and watched the first movie last night.

She loves the books so much she wants to read them again. Part of my purpose in reading them with her was to get her to like reading and it worked at least with these books! We’re moving on to other books, but I told her she can read them on her own now. They are the first books that really got her interested in reading at all.

I didn’t read any Harry Potter books till I was an adult (it shocks my children to know they didn’t exist when I was a kid). The content of the books can be scary and dark.

My experience with my daughter makes me realize that there is no right age to introduce these books and the movies. My second daughter desperately wants to read them too, but I know with her personality she needs to be a little older than her sister was when we started them.

 

Happy Anniversary Harry Potter!

Today is the anniversary of the first Harry Potter book being published! Today my daughter also asked me if I had read Harry Potter when I was a kid. Nope! I was a teenager when it was first published in the UK and wasn’t introduced to the series till my college roommates gave them to me to read.

It is pretty magical to know that my children will get to grow up with them. My daughter and I started reading them together this year. We’re doing it the right way–read a book, watch the movie. It is so fun to see her reactions to story lines and plot shifts that are so familiar to me.

Harry Potter means a lot to a lot of people. And it’s amazing to know how one person’s imagination created a story and a world that has literally changed the world.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander

I came late to reading all the Harry Potter books, and so am just now getting around to reading the companion book, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I love Harry Potter, but I don’t think I would have read this book if it weren’t for the movie version coming out in November.

The book is small and as a pretend text book, it would read a bit dry if it weren’t for the bits of humor added throughout, both by the “author” and by the pretend notes written in it by Harry and his friends.

This book is definitely for Harry Potter fans, and would make a good gift for a child who already had all the Harry Potter books. The movie trailer looks really good and I’m interested to see the plot they attach to a book with no plot at all.

What about you? Are you a Harry Potter fan? What level of obsessed are you?

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Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
By Newt Scamander (aka J.K. Rowling)
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Year: 2001
Ages: Early Reader, Middle Grade Books