[HPforGrownups] so, let's start with name choices &?

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 192826

On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 11:47 AM, FrogCreekWoods frogcreekwoods at gmail.com
[HPforGrownups] <HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
> I was going to ask you all - at what point during reading SS for the
first time did you realize it was something really special?

All my adult life, I've been involved in mentoring and advocating for the
rights and needs of intellectually gifted children - really clever kids.
I'm now a teacher of such kids, but back in 1999, I was working as a
software engineer during the whole 'Y2K situation' and doing voluntary work
with gifted kids.

The Harry Potter books took off in the gifted community just a little bit
before they grabbed mainstream attention - not by much but enough that I
was seeing lots of references to 'Harry Potter' books on email discussion
lists devoted to gifted children and how people's kids were loving them.
Most of these lists were based out of America, and I'm in Australia, so
initially I assumed it was something American but when I visited a
bookstore during my lunchbreak, I saw 'Philosopher's Stone' and 'Chamber of
Secrets' sitting on the shelf and so picked them up just out of idle
interest. The covers of those editions were interesting - a black and white
photo of a steam train for PS, and a black and white photo of a Ford Anglia
in the clouds for CoS. They gave no real clue of what the books were.

I started reading them on the train home that evening. Now. I grew up in
the 1980s loving stories set in schools, especially boarding schools. From
the late 19th century until about the 1960s, the 'English school story' was
a massive part of English children's literature - literally hundreds of
books in that genre were published and though I came along a little later,
I read a lot of them as a kid. My own school life was pretty awful in many
ways for many reasons, and these stories of other types of schools helped
me get through. So when I realised that what I was reading really was a
classic English school story - but with the added bonus of magic - that
hooked me. I knew - because I collect them - that the school story was
considered a dead and dated genre so for new books of that type to be so
successful, that also told me there had to be something special about them.
It was also immediately obvious to me why these books were such a hit in
the gifted community - books with realistic gifted children as characters
are pretty rare, especially girls - and Hermione immediately stood out as
one of the best examples of this I'd seen. As a former gifted child that
also really engaged me. A character where being clever, very clever, was a
major positive. Brilliant. (Incidentally, I would say Ron and Harry also
come across as intellectually gifted - not to the same extent as Hermione -
in a technical sense, I'd say she's 99.9th percentile or higher, and Harry
and Ron are around 98th percentile - but definitely gifted. But for none of
them is that all they are - they are brave. Resourceful. And wonderful
friends.

I'd finished Philosopher's Stone by the time I got off the train which
meant it took me about an hour. Now, I do read very fast - but to read that
that fast it really sucked me in so I could not control or restrain myself.

I also saw a lot of Harry's experiences for myself. I mentioned before that
a lot of my school life as a child was problematic. The worst year of my
life was when I was 12 and I wound up attending a school where I was
horribly bullied and it was just allowed to happen. I also didn't fit in
and was academically unchallenged. It was hell. But because of that, just
after I turned 13, I started at a new school - a school totally different
to anything I experienced before. And I loved it. And I still remember
vividly the feeling I had the first day I walked through the gates of that
school and realised I was finally somewhere I could belong and fit in and
maybe, just maybe, be happy. So I really felt Harry's similar feelings
vividly.

Shaun
(Crikey Elf - seeing it's been a while since the list was active! Nice to
see some good discussion).
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://archive.hpfgu.org/pipermail/hpforgrownups/attachments/20151114/203b48be/attachment.html>