It was ten years ago when I first saw Harry Pot­ter and the Sorcerer’s Stone sit­ting on the shelf at Borders.

I dis­tinctly remem­ber the front cover illus­tra­tion, how col­or­ful it looked from afar and think­ing how geeky the boy on the cover looked with his round glasses and oddly-shaped scar. Yet, because it was a children’s book I fig­ured it wasn’t worth my time.

The Cho­sen One

I would’ve never guessed that not only would I read (and digest) every book in the series and watch every movie to date I would finally say good­bye to such a rich and imag­i­na­tive world and a char­ac­ter that, next to Mickey Mouse, is so well known around the world.

The road to under­stand­ing Harry Pot­ter wasn’t so smooth for me. It took some con­vinc­ing on the part of my best friend’s father, who in his late 40s fig­ured out some­thing that I could not; that children’s books are writ­ten for chil­dren but also meant to be enjoyed by adults.

Adult fic­tion can be stress­ful and com­pli­cated, tak­ing itself too seri­ously at times which is not to say children’s lit­er­a­ture doesn’t stray from com­pli­cated plots, it’s just writ­ten in a man­ner that even at its most basic level a child could understand.

If you think for a moment of the best children’s sto­ries turned to movie adap­ta­tions, sprin­kled in there will be films that prob­a­bly rate high on your all-time favorite list.

A few that come to my mind are:

• The Wiz­ard of Oz by Frank L. Baum
• Bambi by Felix Salten
• Jumaji by Chris Van Allsburg

There are sev­eral oth­ers that have had such a pro­found impact on all of our lives and to think they all began as sto­ries intended for children.

Moral Align­ment

As for Harry Pot­ter, after hav­ing read the first book, I had a cul­ti­vated ini­tia­tive to fin­ish the series to the end. It was my goal and since I’ve reached it there are thoughts that have stayed with me through­out the course of the story.

Many of which deal with the fact that Harry doesn’t fit the mold for a hero. He isn’t bulky, doesn’t have strength beyond his wand and depends on the aide of others.

How­ever, he is the epit­ome of hope and strength to the wiz­ard­ing world, which shares par­al­lels with groups that in a his­tor­i­cal con­text have been sup­pressed in every cul­ture under the sun. While Harry never truly rec­og­nizes his impor­tance, he remains hum­ble and lov­ing and these are traits that ulti­mately keep him on the straight and nar­row, resilient to the evil that is always at bay.

This strug­gle between good and evil, right and wrong, deci­sions based on the protagonist’s moral stand­ing are com­mon threads shared by good lit­er­a­ture. Lit­er­a­ture that pulls you in, makes you feel sor­row and empa­thy and lays the ground­work for the ulti­mate showdown.

A World That Seems Real

While I con­sider myself a healthy reader there’s never been a series that has cap­ti­vated me as much as the Harry Pot­ter story has. I’m a lover of fan­tasy and while the Lord of the Rings books are grandiose, they can be dif­fi­cult to read because the lan­guage itself (explored in depth by Tolkien) is a char­ac­ter unto itself.

The enjoy­ment of read­ing Harry Pot­ter stems from the fact that Rowl­ing doesn’t take her­self too seri­ously and instead has fun with her mate­r­ial. I believe that beyond her shy per­sona is a woman who is witty and con­stantly imag­in­ing things as evi­denced in the books. She man­aged to make read­ing inter­est­ing again for chil­dren and that alone deserves attention.

There’s a lot to like about Harry Pot­ter and for that he’ll remain as real as other char­ac­ters in fic­tion have become.