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"Keep the ending to yourself, Damozel, and we'll throw in an Invisibility Cloak, a Marauder's Map, and a Remembrall."
US boy buys new Harry Potter book. A nine-year-old boy returns the latest Harry Potter book after a shop accidentally sold it to him. [BBC News | Entertainment | UK Edition]
Honesty is the best policy. Sylum Mastropaolo returned the book to a bookstore that sold it to him by mistake after reading only a 'few pages'. His stepfather felt that they had to do the right thing in order not to ruin it the book for other children who have to wait for the official release on Saturday. Not sure how that follows, but I'm happy to say that young Sylum was rightly rewarded with 'Harry Potter goodies.' As well he should have been. You have to give him credit.
Or rather, I have to. It would have taken more than a few Harry Potter action figures and assorted memorabilia (though those are cool too) to keep me from reading the whole thing in a single gulp---and probably rereading it. And I'm no nine-year old child. In fact, I'm too old even to have children who would consider themselves the right age to read Harry Potter. My husband reads them too---though not till after I've had the first go.
And I have to differ with Potter-detractors such as Robert Winder [linked article at bbc.co.uk.] that adult readers of Potter are necessarily developmentally stunted fanboys and -girls who babble about Gryffindor and Slytherin. According to this article, those detractors apparently include A.S. Byatt, all of whose books I have also devoured. She feels that an adult reader of Potter must by necessity by reverting to his or her 'inner child' (as if that is a bad thing') and that they are "for people whose interests are confined to the worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip." Would she be shocked to learn that one of her devoted fans has repeatedly read both the Potter books and The Game, The Matisse Stories, and Possession.
I think if I'd got my hands on an illicit copy, I'd have read it straight through from beginning to end. They wouldn't have had to worry about me keeping silent about it because it's not the sort of thing I am going to admit to anyone I know, is it? But the point is: if I had acquired it, I'd have read it. I totally would NOT have returned it. I admit it. And I would do it, knowing that it was wrong.
So perhaps the Pope is right, as the above-cited article states, that these books 'deeply distort Christianity.' Though to be fair, he apparently made that statement before he became infallible. Clearly, someone needs to introduce him to the child saint Sylum Mastropaolo.
In the meantime, if you are an adult who has not had an occasion or an excuse to read the Potter books (or see the films), you have a whole world of guilty pleasure in store. I'd recommend starting with the third one, The Prisoner of Azkaban, which is where I think she really hit her stride, but I love the first two just as much. Go on, they're psychic comfort food!
Images © 2006 Jupiterimages Corporation. Used pursuant to license from Animation Factory.com.
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