The Magic of Reading Together

I came in and out of the living room a few times during the movie and, each time, he was in a different position. He was sitting, leaning back on the soft couch cushions; then he was lying down on his side, his legs splayed without any regard for his grandfather who was seated next to him; then he was on the floor, his posture straight enough to make an opera singer proud. His eyes were glued to the screen, rapt attention replacing the blank zombie stare that he usually wore when he watched television. A number of short gasps escaped his lips as he watched, usually accompanied by a smile and the occasional exclamation of, “Oh, I know what’s about to happen!” He asked me a couple of questions about the plot during the early parts but gave up when he realized I was just going to keep telling him to wait and see.

I wasn’t going to spoil his first time watching Harry Potter.

E and I began reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone last winter. It was a bit slow at first, as his first-grade brain tried to keep up with the higher level vocabulary and the need to use his imagination instead of relying on pictures. Then our opportunities to read together dwindled somewhat as schedules became more hectic during the spring and E lost interest. He still read on his own but chose to focus on books like Dog Man, Bad Kitty and the Ordinary People Change the World biography series. Harry had made it to his first Potions class but he seemed destined to stay there for quite a bit longer than I’m sure he would have liked.

Then a package came in the mail around E’s birthday from very close friends of ours. E tore open the wrapping paper to reveal the Harry Potter Marauder’s Map Guide to Hogwarts (wand included!), a set of Hogwarts bookmark clips and the illustrated first three volumes of the Harry Potter series. E began flipping through the Marauder’s Map immediately and insisted on reading through it together before returning to the actual novels. I tried to convince him that he should just read the books first because the Map was going to give away a number of key plot points from later in the series but he was undeterred. I read him the book grudgingly, doing my best to skip over any major reveals, and continued encouraging him to “Just wait until we read the story! You’ll find out!”¹

In retrospect, it actually was a good thing we read the map book first. It gave E more of a foundation for understanding the Harry Potter magical world and, for a seven-year-old, he needed more of a framework to understand what he was reading. He dove right back into the novels afterward – the illustrations in his new books helped too – and we finished Sorcerer’s Stone in about two weeks.

He was hooked.

E carried his new wand everywhere. He began asking when we would be able to watch the movies before we had even finished the first book. We started reading the second novel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the next night after we finished the first one. He requested a different character or object from the Harry Potter world for each water bottle drawing.² And he has already informed T and me that he will be dressing as Harry Potter for Halloween.

Of course, it is also a thrill for me to read the books with E. I tore through the series when I read it the first time and I read them again as an adult. I felt a bit of a letdown when E didn’t feel the same passion about Star Wars when we watched A New Hope together for the first time; it was probably still a bit above his level of understanding so he didn’t get quite as attached. But he’s latched onto Harry Potter in exactly the way I would have hoped. He listens to the story, gets excited to hear what comes next and begs for more when we have to stop for the night. Most importantly, Harry Potter is something new to help us connect, an experience for us to share.

You might even say it’s magical.

^{1. A central character is killed at the end of the sixth book and I had it spoiled for me by an eight-year-old girl. I’d been driving a bus for a summer camp when the book came out and, one morning, the girl came on and declared that she had finished the new volume in a weekend. I started to ask her not to spoil anything for me but she pushed right along and said, “Did you know that __________ dies at the end?” So, in summary, I once made an eight-year-old girl cry and I’m never going to apologize for it.↩}

^{2. I included some of those drawings in this post but make sure you’re following me on Facebook and Instagram to see the drawings each day in my Stories.↩}