Happy Birthday, Harry

In December of 2001, I took an adorable little boy -- who's now packing a bag to start college at Hartwick next month -- to see a children's movie I'd never heard of. Fifteen minutes into the feature, Brandon and I are enthralled by thousands of owls delivering thousands of letters through every available opening in a just-like-Mrs.-Next-Door's house, and I knew I  had to learn the rest of the story.

On New Year's Day 2002, I curled up with the book that inspired that film, the story of an 11-year-old boy who learns he's a wizard, and goes on to find a place that he might, eventually, call home.  Not five minutes in, I was hooked. Cue up eight years of reading and rereading and rereading, standing in lines for midnight releases of books 5, 6, and 7 and films 2, 3, 4, and 5. Cue up Nimbus 2003 and The Witching Hour and Phoenix Rising. Herald friends like Katie and Kathryn and Aja and Erica. Cue up kitchen experiments, hitting on amazing recipes for amber-dark butterbeer and buttery, flaky pumpkin pasties. Cue up remembering how much FUN books are, after a decade of learning to treat reading as serious business.

Thank you, young Mister Potter. Happy Thirtieth Birthday.

First published at expetesso.com.