everyday references to HP/toddler tales

[Steve Vander Ark]

No: HPFGUIDX 3037

Okay, kid stories...

My son is 8 and he was experiencing what my wife and I call "The 
Ghandi Syndrome." When that movie came out, everyone we knew said we 
just HAD to go see it, so we built up this attitude about it and have 
not seen it to this day. We now see that happening a lot: everyone 
gets excited about something so there's a bit of a negative backlash. 
Anyhow, he just didn't think Harry Potter was anything interesting at 
all and thought his parents and big sister were silly for getting all 
worked up. He put up with us going to Borders at midnight last July 
but he treated the whole thing as a bit of a bore. I tried to read SS 
aloud to him, but he wasn't interested.

And then we got the tapes. And he just happened to hear them playing 
as we rode in the car, as I did housework, in my office as I worked, 
etc. And the next thing we knew, his little red-haired head was 
buried in SS. Then he was playing Harry Potter with everyone in the 
backyard and reading the book every chance he could and carrying a 
wand around everywhere he went. (This is from the kid who never read 
more than a chapter or two of any book in his life.) He wanted me to 
read it to him at night before bed. He finished SS and started 
immediately on CS, which is where he is now. And yesterday, as we sat 
in a restaurant for dinner, he was the most excited about playing 
Harry Potter trivia, even telling me that he remembered that Uncle 
Vernon's desk faced away from the window in his office at 
Grunnings "because I remember the picture I have in my head of it." 

And frankly, I'm just as boggled by the fact that his 12-year-old 
sister read a 732-page book this summer! That's amazing too!

Is this cool or what?

Steve Vander Ark
The Harry Potter Lexicon
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon