The Impact of Harry Potter

For the most part this will be a political blog, but I decided to take a moment to reflect on the impact that the Harry Potter books have had on me and so many others as with the release of Deathly Hallows pt 2 it all officially comes to an end. A couple of weeks ago at the World Premier of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 people had been lining up to see the films stars and JK Rowling herself for days upon days. There were so many people present that they had to move the starting place of the red carpet from Leicester Square (where are seven previous premiers have been held) to the nearby Trafalgar Square. An estimated 20,000 people lined the route just to experience the magic one last time. Most of them had camped out in the pouring rain for upwards of five days. These are the type of things that have become so routine with the Harry Potter phenomenon that I think we sometimes take it for granted. But watching those massive crowds on Youtube it struck me that they were all there because of a book. Now I know that they were there to see Dan, Rupert, and Emma, but I bet you that not one person who was there facing the elements for five days was someone who had just seem the films, they were all fans of the books. Never before Harry Potter would it have been imaginable to have midnight releases for a book (& a book labeled as a "children's" book at that). So as a Harry Potter fan who started reading the books with my mom at age 11, and as a future teacher who recognizes that all too often kids don't like to read, I want to say thank you to JK Rowling for the gift of her stories that have kept both kids and adults fascinated and reading (& rereading) and watching (& rewatching) the movies for the last decade.