[bksvol-discuss] Harry Potter Article
- From: "Susan Lumpkin" <slumpkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:00:59 -0500
This was in our local newsdpaper today.
Susan
life Growing up amid Potter magic Kids who grew up with book
characters had unique pop culture vantage point By Jeff
Salamon AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Friday, July 20, 2007 Growing up
amid Potter magic Kids who grew up with book characters had unique
pop culture vantage point By Jeff Salamon
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Friday, July 20, 2007
Tonight, if all goes according to plan, Saloni Mehra will live out the
fantasy of millions of children around the world.
About 1 a.m. U.K. time, Mehra, one of 1,700 Harry Potter fans who won a
lottery to attend an event called J.K. Rowling and the Moonlight Signing,
will enter London's Natural History Museum. There, she will get in line and
wait to meet Rowling, who will sign Mehra's complimentary copy of the final
Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."
If she's feeling courageous enough, she might even talk to Rowling - though
not for too long. Rowling will have 1,699 other books to sign and just as
many fans to chat up before the museum reopens to the public in the morning.
Still, a few intimate moments with your favorite writer in the world is
something to savor.
"I can't find the words to say," Mehra says. I can't believe I'm going to
meet her!"
It is, in short, a young girl's dream.
Here's the catch, though: Saloni Mehra isn't a young girl. She's a
19-year-old graduate of McNeil High School majoring in business at the
University of Texas.
It's not, of course, unusual for an adult to be a Harry Potter fan.
From the start of the series in 1997, one of the most striking things has
been how broadly the books appeal to young and old alike. In the U.K.,
Rowling's publisher releases each Potter book with two covers: one aimed at
kids and one at adults.
What is notable about Mehra is that she and her peers are the last of a
breed: kids who grew up with Harry Potter. Though the seven books are likely
to remain a favorite with children for decades to come, the current crop of
college-age Potter fans experienced something unique: a perfect storm of
happenstance, marketing savvy and generational enthusiasm bordering on mass
hysteria.
Many of them started reading the series nine years ago, when they were
approximately the same age Harry is in the first book, "Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone." And as they've aged, so, more or less, has Harry.
"That made a really big difference," Mehra says from Edinburgh, Scotland,
where she is studying business law for the summer. We basically have grown
up with Harry Potter."
Mehra's best friend, Rachel Harvey, 19, who is studying chemical engineering
at UT, had the same sense of relating to the books'
characters.
"When they started school, Harry was 11, and I was 10 or 11," Harvey says.
Obviously, we're a little bit older then they are now, but it seems like it
kind of paced with our growth. We got to grow up with them; we got to
connect with them."
Margaret Halpin, a 19-year-old geography major at UT, uses the books as life
benchmarks.
"I was talking to a friend on the phone recently about this book coming out,
and we're sort of bummed out," Halpin says. We're really excited on the one
hand, but on the other hand, I can remember different parts of the last 10
years based on what Harry Potter book had come out then. And this last one
is sort of symbolic of closing the book on growing up. I'm a little
reluctant to see it end."
Bringing it to life
Like many Potter fans, Mehra and Harvey did more than just read the books.
They threw Harry Potter parties, dressed up as their favorite characters and
made various Hogwarts desserts from recipes they found on the Internet.
"At home we even had a cupboard under our staircase," Mehra says. So we had
a little sign that said 'Cupboard Under the Stairs' " - in honor of Harry's
squalid lodgings at the Dursleys' house.
Bethany Esfandiari, 18, who grew up in Georgetown, brings a similar
intensity to her love of all things Potter. Every time a new book comes out,
Georgetown's Main Street is transformed into a large-scale Potter festival.
Local restaurants serve Aragog's Eggs and 10-Ton Toffee; the public library
turns itself into a Forbidden Forest.
One year, Esfandiari and a friend had the idea to whittle their own magic
wands out of branches and sell them at the festival. Their first year, they
made about 40 wands, and each of them cleared $400. This year, Esfandiari
expects to sell 60 wands.
"People make fun of me for whittling," she says. But when I tell them how
much I make, they stop."
Georgetown's festival and the elaborate events being held tonight at
BookPeople and various Barnes &Noble and Borders branches are a reminder of
how important the anticipation for each book has been to Potter fandom.
"I pretty much every year went to the midnight readings and book parties at
Barnes &Noble," Mehra says. Just having people to be with who love something
that you love, too, is just a great feeling."
"I've got a bunch of interns here between 12 and 15, and the anticipation is
killing them," says Topher Bradfield, children's outreach coordinator at
BookPeople. They've been dying for two years to know what's going on. Is
Dumbledore really dead? Is Rowling really going to kill Harry?"
It's difficult to imagine that this dynamic will ever be duplicated for
future Potter fans.
"I kind of think of the 'Star Wars' movies," Harvey says. My parents were in
high school when the movies came out, and they were anticipating the next
one and the next one. And when I watch them, I like them, but I don't get
that sense of anticipation.
"I'll want my kids to read the Harry Potter books, but I don't think it'll
be the same as it was for me."
Discovering Harry
Like "Star Wars," Harry Potter is now a series of movies, and that, too,
will shift how young readers experience the books.
"I think one of the biggest factors is the movies, which have really changed
things," Bradfield says. When I go to schools to do outreach, I find that
the new kids, in greater and greater numbers, haven't read the books.
They've seen the movies. Their older siblings have read the books
- they're huge fans - but some of that is lost on the younger kids."
Esfandiari, Mehra and Harvey all have stories of how they discovered the
Harry Potter books, almost as if they were a secret.
"My sister and I walked into the Little Walnut Creek library not really sure
how to spell the author's name or what exactly the book was called," Mehra
remembers. We spent, like, a good two to three hours looking for it."
Today, no potential Potter fan will experience that sense of discovery.
A 9-year-old who starts reading "Harry Potter" in 2007 will have already
seen the five movies - or at least trailers for the movies on TV.
If she starts reading the books and plows through them in a year or two,
she'll also miss the opportunity to grow up in sync with Harry.
She'll miss the exquisite anticipation of waiting for each book to come out
and the over-the-top parties that accompany each release. She will, most
likely, enjoy the books, even love them. But the frenzied attachment that
today's teens bring to the series will probably be as alien to her as
Beatlemania.
Still, at least two Potter fans will do their best to recreate that
experience for their children.
"I've talked about this a lot with Rachel," Mehra says. We always joke about
how when we have kids, we're going to make them wait every year and give
them a Potter novel. Maybe one every Christmas, so they can get the same
excitement we did."
jsalamon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; 445-3610
THIS WEEKEND
Saturday: Local writers offer their own endings for the saga.
Sunday: A review of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
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