Though I’ll never, EVER share in your ecstasy, I sincerely hope that all of you Harry Pot-heads out there (ahem, achoo, cough, Ennis) are enjoying your weekend of magic and mediocre prose. I keed, I keed!
All over the world, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is dominating the news, most stores and quite a few lives right about now. On the right, these two bespectacled little boys in New Delhi who are holding their prized “bricks” are so cute, I’ve forgotten to smirk.
Meanwhile, this gaggle of adorable children attended a Harry Potter party in Calcutta. And the rest of you? Did you don capes and wave magic wands at similar? Or are you too busy reading through the sixth HP to admit to such activities? 😀
Oh, and before you hurl it at me below, of course I agree with the oft-proffered declaration that “at least it gets kids to read”, though I’m astonished that you have to get them to do so in the first place. As a child, my parents punished me by taking away my library card. I did not require Dumbledores, muggles, quidditch or other J.K. Rowling-created concepts to inspire me to pick up a book. But whatever. (Cue the comment thread where we all attempt to out-do each other with tales of bibliophilia/nerdery and…begin.)
I accidentally ran into a Harry Potter feeding frenzy in the local Barnes and Nobles on Friday night. I asked the store clerk–“so you’re going to be open until midnight?” He said “we’ll be open way past midnight.” another one rolled his eyes.
It was fun, though. There’s nothing like Christmas 🙂
never read ’em. but man, i was shocked at how many, of all ages were walking around with their new potter books. a lot of times iz all hype…but this time, iz for real.
Hari Puttar? Bad civil service specs, good at studies, scheduled caste — also Indian!
It really troubles me to hear people say things like that… it’s not good enough that at least they’re reading… they need to be pushed towards quality literature. Just cause they’re reading something is not enough.
Just like we don’t say for kids who listen to just Britney Spears and such, we don’t say at least it gets kids to listen to music… we hope that kids will move to recognize what music is crap and what music is quality. Same thing goes for literature.
It diminishes the impact and power of quality literature when you accept kids reading anything.
Saurav,
I worked Harry Potter night at a Barnes and Noble cafe; I thought it was better than Christmas — we had a steady line wrapping around the cafe (ours is one of those in the center of the store) and out into the store (literally a line of 50+, when we’re used to no more than 10 at worst for holidays), from 8:30am to 1am, but since everyone’s waiting for their book, there’s no rush, and the customers are in good spirits. I felt so bad for this one woman who asked me, around 7:30pm (a half hour before the party/activities started), “what’s with all the kids?” When I explained to her the sudden crowds, she and the woman after her left quickly after getting their drinks, throwing their money at me and saying, “Keep the change!”
Seriously, though, when I got hired a year ago, “Harry Potter night” was always something discussed by my senior coworkers… “Oh, you think this is bad? Just wait ’til Harry Potter.”
Anyway, I’m not sure about other stores, but we basically stay open until everyone who got a numbered wristband gets their book, which was about 1:45am. We roll our eyes because we’ve been preparing for this night since the last one a few years ago, but (at least for me) the whole ordeal is actually a lot of fun. Just don’t bring it around any more frequently than that 🙂
should read “8:30pm to 1am”
sorry, i’m still recovering 🙂
Half Blood Prince? We’ve got one of those!
Now leave me alone, I’m practicing my wingardium leviosa
Yes, I was basically one of these people. I actually was there because my friend wanted to get a copy of some socialist magazine. The magazine section happened to be where most of the Harry Potter kids and their parents were sitting (sitting isn’t exaclty the write word–it was more like a slow moving mass).
After finding what he needed, we were on our way to a slightly less insane section of the store when my friend decided he needed to go back to the swarming Potterite magazine section. “Can you handle going back there for a second?” he asked, and then looking at my face, he said, “don’t worry about it.”
I asked the teenage kid behind the counter if he got any overtime. He was sort of surprised at the question and stumbled and then said “well, no..you only get overtime if you work 40 hours…but you get paid more” at which point I rolled my eyes.
Repeat after me: there is no need for Pathmark to be open at 3 a.m.
Ain’t no shame in my game. I’m just embarassed to have a life (of sorts) that is interfering with my getting the book read. Since I’m not done, no spoilers y’all!
Spoilers will be deleted – people who post spoilers will be BANNED.
The kid with the patka, in the bottom pic, is mad cute.
You can tell that I’m still pretty scattered.
I’m hoping that the timing of this book is good for the kids of London, they could really use a few laughs and giggles right now. Then again, this is not one of her lighter books …
Now, if you will excuse me, “Accio brain” !
I hear you on the debate concerning “at least it gets kids to read.” But it’s a different time from when we were growing up. Video games weren’t the same, there was no internet, let alone high speed access in every room, and 600 television channels available at the click of a remote.
Sure kids should be reading anyway, and there’s a lot of other stuff out there for them to read, but if the excitement of picking up a book, finding a story that carries them away, and even being able to think more critically about the interpretation of the written word vis-a-vis the ubiquitous (and bland) movie series is a good thing.
Maybe every kid won’t pick up other books, but at least the idea of reading more isn’t foreign to them now that they have picked up books with more than 100,000 words and sped through them.
I’m still not a huge fan of the hysteria, of course, but I think that it’s a good thing for children’s literature, the way that the Beatles were a good thing for pop music because it let the audience know that it’s okay to expect more. Hopefully this will do the same for other writers.
Wish I could get a Hari Puttar book though. That sounds great! We could have a token pair of white twins called Patricia and Winifred!
I bought my brother a copy of the first Harry Potter for what must have been his tenth or eleventh birthday. Before then, my brother wouldn’t read. Actually, let’s make that Wouldn’t Read; he was a TV kid for all intents and purposes. Our mom tried to push various books on him, but he refused.
Anyways, long story short: he now reads Harry Potter at the age of eighteen, but he also is reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, and he discovered Hari Kunzru on his own, and George Orwell, and … well, he likes reading.
So I consider HP to be a gateway book, sort of. It gets kids in bookstores and libraries, which is a start.
Also, as someone who was a very precocious reader, one problem I had with reading growing up was that when I hit my post-childhood, pre-teen era, my reading abilities were way ahead of my awareness. I hated violence and couldn’t have been less interested in sex, and books written for “grownups” were often lost on me because of themes too complex for a suburban ten-year-old. My parents fed me Ayn Rand (didn’t get it) and Margaret Mitchell (ate it up, it fit) but I also wasted time on the Sweet Valley High shite during that period.
HP would have helped fill the gap a little bit, methinks, had it existed during that time.
Come on people, they are kids and they are reading a childrens book. I dont think Rowling ever called her work booker prize winning work. I mean I am not one of fads either, but its seems nice and they seem to be happy, so whats the damage ?
Unfortunatley anna all the youth today cant share your rather precocious intellect at such a young age! Give the kids a break.
uh…why aren’t you directing this at the other precocious readers in the thread, too? i wouldn’t want them to feel left out. 😉
giving kids “a break” doesn’t prevent me from expressing my surprise that reading is seen as such a herculean task or chore. besides, even if it’s not booker-worthy material, i do have the right to say that i don’t think HP is all that, especially since an ass-load of adults are reading him too, so it’s not like i’m picking on babies. do you guys KNOW how old Ennis is??? 😉
look, i used to work in the children’s section of barnes and noble, long before there was a harry. our shelves weren’t empty then. 🙂 there ARE other books out there, i promise. und mit that…curmudgeon-ette out.
All Im saying Hermione is that not everyones worst fear is a rebuked library card.
Yeah, Anj. I agree..most ‘Young Adult’ books out there are drivel – they latch onto adolescent interest in sex, offer PG-13 soap operas, and are situated in some weird netherworld where adults don’t exist or matter. Or they handle movie-of-the-week themes of rape, divorce, etc…just about as well as the TV. This applies to just about anything with a (YA) library sticker on it.
I quite admire the way Rowling ages her protagonist, and she doesn’t shy away from giving her younger readers some difficult facts about adults – they can lie, be wrong, be vain, be cruel, be ignorant, and die. She doesn’t pander to adult sensibilities of what kids ‘are ready’ to know about.
I think that’s why most kids love the books (kids can smell condescension). Adults find the books so gripping because she actually tends to her plot…something most adult novels are too sophisticated to care about, supposedly. And adult pot-boiler/page-turner airport junk usually has plots far far more highly improbable than the idea that my neighbour is a squib.
I knew better than to admit liking (oh, fuck it. I heartlurvunicorns&rainbows) the books back when I worked at a publishing house, for all the reasons adults aren’t supposed to like ’em…plus some ‘industry’ extras. Anyway, screw it. If you’re holding your nose above the HP mania, all I can say is tough chapatis…you’re missing out.
You know..that pic of the Harry Potter children’s party…reminds me of the time I was dwarf #3 in an un-Disney school production of Snow White in Sri Lanka. Dwarves were plucked from the 1st grade for a 5th grade play.
Anyway, our parents had to get us the little wooden pickaxes for the mining number (it was a musical, btw), and my dad banged the short cross-brace of a chair to the longer one and sent me off to the dress rehearsal. Of course, all six other dwarves pulled out professionally carved little axes, gleaming with varnish that night.
(sigh)
I just know some kid’s mom shoved a black plastic trash bag over his little body and called it a robe, and now he’s dying of shame, hiding from those smug fuckers wearing tailor-made outfits.
Anna, my parents did the same with my library card! I never understood why I was being punished for reading while my friends were being rewarded for reading a book once in a while. But, alas, I now understand.
Okay, I’ll admit it…. I pre-ordered the book…. I got my goodie bag which included jelly beans, a coloring book, a kid-authored guide to harry potter, a free speech button, and of course, my number for my place in line at midnight. I’m not ashamed… okay maybe just a little… 🙂
On an entirely different note, when you start talking about how kids today have gone downhill, and that it was so much better in your day, isn’t that the point at which you are officially old? 😉
Bad library card!
Listen, at least all of y’all HAD libraries. Do you have ANY idea how many rupees I’ve blown on converting them to dollars and pounds just so that I could get decent books in Karachi?
The Phantom Tollbooth, y’all. That was my fave. But both my parents were English teachers before I was born, so I imagine that parents who read a lot produce kids who read a lot. My dad had students at his public high school who didn’t have a LICK of reading in their household other than cereal boxes. Last week I went to a London high school to help a friend test a board game, and listening to the kids read aloud from the question cards was SO painful because it was clear they don’t read much.
Do you think the new Charlie & The Chocolate Factory will get kids into Roald Dahl? The movie of the Neverending Story made me find the book, which was a zillion times better.
My ten-year old niece was already reading him (which I’m quite happy about, because he rocks even though he apparently hated kids). There’s a New Yorker article on his appeal to kids this week, btw, which I’m dying to read (or get a summary of–hint, hint).
At least you didn’t have to play Woodrow Wilson in a Flag Day play or sing It’s a Small World in bangla against your will in front of the whole school.
Bitter? Me? Never.
Look at the photo above with all the little kids looking in awe at the boy dressed as a wizard. Then look at the coolest one who is the little Singh wearing a cute blue patka. Then look at the expression on his face, its like, yeah fuck you, you are you trying to impress, I’m a gangster, you expect me to be impressed? hahaha what a dude
Yay, I got my pre-ordered copy this wknd. Have been happily lost in Hogwarts since then. It really sucks that I have to put the book down for another mundane day at work…
All Im saying Hermione is that not everyones worst fear is a rebuked library card.
Bad library card!
hahahah I acquiesce.
actually come to think of it, a rebuked library card is exactly what I mean.
S
You are my hero today!
I suspect you are right. My mom was an English & Lit professor and she says I could read on my own before I was out of diapers. Sadly, I’m now an addict, binging at B&N or Borders.
A N N A:
DD:
HA!
FINALLY, it begins. 😉
The Phantom Tollbooth! Thanks for posting that, brought up memories of my childhood. I could never remember the name of that damn book.
How about: James and the Giant Peach, The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, all of Narnia, all of A Wrinkle in Time, all of The Letter, the Witch and the Ring, all of Piers Anthony, Heinlein and Asimov. Lighter reading: the Scott Corbett books, Pippi Longstockings and Encyclopedia Browns…
Is everyone on this thread an aspiring novelist?
I couldn’t help it, ANNA. My bookish nerd-girl had her hand in the air, waving, as I said “oh! oh! me! me! call on me!”
somebody had to start 😉
You know when JK Rowling started writing her novels she was on welfare living in a single room with her daughter in Edinburgh and now she is worth a billion dollars because she gets a cut of the movies too? Do you think when she started writing she could ever imagine that a little feisty gangster Singh with a blue patka in India would be her fan?
omg, that line made me flash back to 2nd grade, where me and my best friend would race to be the first one done with assignments. blushes in nerdy shame
My parents said I learned to read before I was 3, which usually beat out everyone else I met until my college boyfriend, who’d apparently almost given his grandma a heart attack by peering over her shoulder at the Wendy’s drive-thru receipt at 18 months, asking “What ‘choc shake’?” Said boyfriend was an English/Comp Lit/Journalism triple major, and is now considering heading to library school to get a 3rd graduate degree. Let that be a warning to all parents — teach your kid to read in diapers, get a liberal-arts weenie 20 years later. 😉
yes, but were you using your other hand to support the one you were waving in the air? b/c true geeks did THAT. 😀
I swear I read in a British paper this weekend that most of the kids they polled said the Harry Potter character they’d most like to be is Hermione. Take THAT, boys!
I would just shout out the answer because I was a gangster.
I’d get really mad at you, except you’re right!
Phantom Tollbooth: I’ve given it to more cousins, nieces, and nephews than any other book.
Add the Prydain Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander to the list… and Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series.
uh, and the Three Investigators books, though I don’t know if anyone has ever read those…
this should keep you guys occupied for the rest of the week. See you Monday!
Yaaay!
No old-school Enid Blyton fans yet? What about her: Famous Five, Secret Seven, St. Clare’s, and Malory Towers series? I loved her books, but of course, wondered if something could be done about my “oily curls” and “swarthy” complexion afterwards. Nah, just kidding. the bigotry wasn’t too bad, once you got used to it 🙂 The original Paddington Bear books were quite nice for younger kids too.
On the American front, you guys left out the Great Brain books and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwelier, and hey – Ramona Quimby! I was rather jealous that I wasn’t creative enough to name anything, let alone a doll, Chevrolet.
I guess that once you’re past 12 or so, it’s best to skip the YA stuff and head straight for adult. Only good YA books mentioned here are all science fiction, yeah? And as for Piers Anthony – we’ve found the shame in your game Manish 😉
I was too busy playing Dungeons & Dragons to read YA books…
then my occasional, affectionate abbreviation of your handle to “DD” will never be the same. 😉
For this, I might be convinced to play for the other team. A woman with a 20-sided die is the kind you take home to mother.
aww Saurav, I’m honored!