Saturday, April 21, 2007

Harry Potter Again!

The last Harry Potter book has been named, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It's due to be out on July 21, and it should be another all-nighter at the bookstores.

Unlike any other series I know of, this series has grown up with it's heroes and heroines, and, more or less, with its reading audience. My own son, now 16, was introduced to HP at the very beginning, 9 long years ago. We read the first book to him, liberally skipping the parts too complex for his understanding. But after that, he devoured every book after that on his own, often beginning on the night of the release. (Harry Potter books are released at midnight at bookstore events featuring costume parties and themed refreshments and long check-out lines.) A couple of the middle books were the objects of read-all-night "slumber" parties.

The last book came out when the boy was 14, and he opined that he was now too old for it. so we skipped the midnight trip to the bookstore. We were off on a cross-country trip the next day,and the airport bookstore had a good price, so I bought the book there. On a "mother's intuition" hunch, I casually left it on top of my carry-on while I visited the rest room. You can guess the rest: he was finished with the first chapter before we left the ground, and I didn't get my reading in until the second day of vacation! Parents of children of a certain age so cherish these last moments of childhood!

For the record, I think that the resolution to this series is going to revolve around the fact that two boys fit the criteria of the savior of the magical world, Harry and Neville. I hope they both survive, but whatever happens, I'm sure it will be a good subject for my annual sermon to the kids (always on a subject of their culture, books, movies, etc.)

I'm not up for a midnight trip to the bookstore, but I am going to pre-order the book and casually leave it around the house. (after I read it, this time!) Amazon's worked it out so that if you pre-order, you get it on release day. If you want to pre-order, here's a link!

1 comment:

Jamie Goodwin said...

A couple of years ago for the last HP book (Half Blood Prince) our bookstore at my local church set up a pre-order event.

It was a very neat way to order it because our bookstore's profits support our Ministers benevolence Fund.

I do hope they do it again this year.