July 28, 2013
January 6, 2013. That was the day I realized I had been wrong. So very, very wrong. How do I even begin?
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released in the U.S. when I was in the sixth grade. Somehow I didn’t hear about it until much later, and by that time they were showing after-school-special type films about the series turning kids into Wiccans at my Christian school. After most of the Church grew out of that phase (thank the Lord), the books had become so stinking popular that my snobby side kicked in, and I couldn’t be bothered to read them.
I took a Young Adult Literature course during my junior year of college, and we were assigned to read—you guessed it—Sorcerer’s Stone. I won’t say I didn’t enjoy it, but I was underwhelmed. Plus, there were elements that bothered me, particularly the anti-muggle sentiment. Harry Potter’s did not seem to be a world that invited me to see my own world with new eyes (as good fantasy literature should do)—it only gave the feeling that normal life wasn’t good enough. So I left the series there, feeling totally justified in my snobbery.
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