<p>My kids - 2 of them especially - were/are big Potter fans and have read and re-read the series. I never thought it would be my “type” of book. My D15 convinced me to start reading them this past fall - on book five and fully invested now!!! </p>
<p>(please no spoilers in this thread for us first-timers)</p>
<p>Have you read the series on your own or did you read it with your kids???</p>
<p>Love…love…love the Harry Potter series! My daughter is currently a senior in college. We started reading the books together when she was 8 or 9. I enjoyed the books so much that I started reading them on my own. The anticipation and excitement of waiting for the next book was fun! My daughter would reread the books just before the next one came out. In fact, we waited in line at Barnes and Noble at midnight for book 7…such fun and good memories! </p>
<p>My daughter still rereads the books every summer. Enjoy!</p>
<p>My kids literally grew up with HP. We read the entire series out loud (although sometimes I snuck ahead in the reading!) Quite fun! By book 7 we did a marathon 22 hour (yep, you read it right!) out loud reading. Just kept passing the book around the table. Great memories. Right before the next yearly book release we would re-read the previous one.
Love the new book cover–I never thought the original book covers did justice to the book. JK Rowling had marvelous art that she did for her book (saw it in an interview once) that I thought should have been used.</p>
<p>I read the first book in the series, shortly after it came out in the US, to two of my children’s classrooms . I read a chapter a day until I finished it: a bigger time commitment than I expected. I listened to audiotapes (thumbs up, Jim Dale!) for books 2-part of 4 on their eventual publication. I lost momentum, I guess, during the wait for subsequent books. D2 recently convinced me that I needed to read them all. So starting last year I reread the first books and continued through book 7. I enjoyed my time spent in Rowling’s world and understand how the Hogwarts crew captured the imaginations of so many. My children awaited each release with bated breath: picking up their copies - one for each - at midnight and then coming home to read. My youngest read straight through till she finished and then slept, waking up to reread the book at her leisure. You could find that behavior throughout homes: you have to be grateful to any author than can make that happen. (I remember reading that emergency room visits dropped the weekend Harry Potter books were released, as kids stayed curled up with their books.)</p>
<p>I actually discovered* Harry Potter* just before he became a phenomena, I felt very clever. At the time I thought it was fun, but very derivative of Diana Wynne Jones whose books I loved. The Potter books got better and Jones got more uneven, so I’d say that it’s a wash now who’s the better author. I thought the later Potter books would have been much better with more editing, but I am grateful nevertheless that she convinced publishers that children would read long books. I had a friend who used to write children’s books until she got so frustrated by the need to slash her manuscripts by as much as a third to meet the marketing department’s requirements. Kids would tell her that they wished her book had been longer to which all she could say was “It was, it was.” I also have to give kudos because it was the desire to read Harry Potter that got my younger child who was really struggling with reading over the hump. He literally went from* Nate the Great* to Harry Potter over night and was so excited when he realized he could read what I was reading out loud to him that he went downstairs to tell his Dad and big brother, “I can read Harry Potter!” He went off to school with the book the next day to read during DEAR time.</p>
<p>Like the new cover just fine, and agree that I was never a big fan of the old covers, though the British cover (at least the ones we have) were worse.</p>
<p>Our kids were so lucky to grow up as the books were being released because the books did get darker as the series progressed. My older son read the first one when it came out in second grade, and the next one didn’t come out for at least a year and so on. I think he would have gobbled them all up if they were available and I don’t think it would have been good for a second grader to read some of the stuff that happens in the later books (no spoilers, abasket!). It’s like both my boys grew up as Harry did in the books.</p>
<p>Yes. I always thought that, too, Yalemom, about the aging of the books’ subject matter.</p>
<p>Mathmom, that is so interesting about your son. My oldest is a gifted dyslexic, basically straight As through college. She will say with a straight unironic tone that the only reason she didn’t give up on learning to read was wanting to get the Potter books away from me and into her own room where she could read more than one chapter a night. :)</p>
<p>If I saw the author, I wouldn’t even know how to thank her for that.</p>
<p>Jo Rowling did a signing here when the first book came out. I think it was one of her first stops because I remember she then did a radio show. She was very nice but somewhat overwhelmed by the response. It was just hitting her. She was very excited and happy to be read. One of my eldest’s friends is a double for young Harry Potter. She pointed that out and I believe she wrote something more in his book. </p>
<p>The great thing is she pulled it off. Lots of things start great and get worse but she pulled it off. It’s tough not to fold under that kind of pressure. I’ve always said that was the great thing about The Beatles: rather than drink and try to produce more pop like Hard Days Night they took the success and ran with it. They went from writing “she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah” to “Living is easy with eyes closed,Misunderstanding all you see, It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out, It doesn’t matter much to me.”</p>
<p>Rowling not only pulled off the series but she made each book essentially age appropriate in writing that fit the characters’ and thus the readers’ ages. From the young child story of adventure to a really scary horror story through to death and torture and dealing with responsibility and so much more. She also managed to write really big books. The first really long one was uneven but think how well the last holds together over hundreds and hundreds of pages.</p>
<p>I read all the Harry Potters out of solidarity with my kids. They had a certain charm. I felt they were uneven, though…a couple of them were not quite up to the standard of the rest.</p>
<p>The magic was clever and fun, but I thought the human interrelationships were the best part. All the Sturm und Drang left me cold.</p>
<p>HP was a godsend for our family. Both girls started reading at 3 years of age, and it was always extremely difficult to find interesting but age appropriate books for them to read as their mastery and comprehension increased. HP and Series of Unfortunate Events did so much to engage them and to keep them intersted in learning a lot of new vocabulary.</p>
<p>Harry Potter was an integral part of my daughters (now college freshmen) childhood. It took me awhile to actually pick the first book up, because I stubbornly thought the hype couldnt be justified.</p>
<p>I read the first book to my kids when they were in kindergarten to make sure it wasnt too scary for them, then we all read the other books on our own. One of my daughters just reread the series (for the umpteenth time) over her winter break.</p>
<p>We all feel grateful that my kids were able to grow up with HP they were the right age at the right time to get caught up in the excitement surrounding the book releases and the movie releases.</p>
<p>I actually like the new cover, but I doubt my kids will!</p>
Us too. My daughter was at a CTY summer program when one of the books had just come out, and the kids were required to put their copies out in the hall at night so they wouldn’t stay up reading it. So they put the new dustjacket on an old book and put that in the hall as a decoy.</p>
<p>Each Harry Potter release was an EVENT in my small town. A friend who owned the local bookstore asked if I’d help create the HP release nights and it was a blast! Kids and parents lined up for blocks to take part in the festivities. </p>
<p>The only sad bit for me is that my son refuses to read them. He’s a non-fiction guy.</p>
<p>D and I “read” the first book together. We had S around (who was perhaps 3 then), so it was difficult for us to find time to read. The first book took a long time to read. When we were done, D asks me with a serious face " Mom, do you mind if I read the rest of them myself? Reading with you just takes too long!". She finished the rest of the books that had been released by then in less than a week!!</p>
<p>S was not allowed to read these books initially - I thought he was too young and wouldn’t understand them. By the time book 6 came out, he had ignored me, gone ahead and read all the other books. For both book 6 and book 7, there was a competition as to who would get to read the book first - D, S or me! S loved the books - even now, he re-reads them over and over again. He could quote stuff from the books that would have me just amazed. He took some HP online quizzes and scored a 100 pretty much every time - even knew the most obscure facts!</p>
<p>I agree with the poster earlier who said it was great that the kids “grew” along with Harry Potter…</p>
At the time I thought it was fun, but very derivative of Diana Wynne Jones whose books I loved. The Potter books got better and Jones got more uneven, so I’d say that it’s a wash now who’s the better author. I thought the later Potter books would have been much better with more editing, but I am grateful nevertheless that she convinced publishers that children would read long books. I had a friend who used to write children’s books until she got so frustrated by the need to slash her manuscripts by as much as a third to meet the marketing department’s requirements. Kids would tell her that they wished her book had been longer to which all she could say was “It was, it was.” I also have to give kudos because it was the desire to read Harry Potter that got my younger child who was really struggling with reading over the hump. He literally went from* Nate the Great* to Harry Potter over night and was so excited when he realized he could read what I was reading out loud to him that he went downstairs to tell his Dad and big brother, “I can read Harry Potter!” He went off to school with the book the next day to read during DEAR time.</p>