I must admit that the hoo-ha over the latest Harry Potter film is rather bittersweet for me. We have always been massive Harry Potter fans. Child One even wrote to J K Rowling, and got a reply, written on gorgeous special paper. That would have been enough to make me love the woman and all her works (imagine being that successful an author, being deluged with fan mail, and yet managing to make a little six-year-old girl feel special? I cried with heartfelt gratitude when my daughter got that letter and even the thought of it makes me cry now). But actually, I have really enjoyed the books and films too.
I know there are a lot of detractors and cries of plagarism, but I think there is huge imagination and verve in Harry Potter, and I am sure I am not the only mother of daughters who is thrilled that, in Hermione, JK made it almost glamorous to be a swot. Added to that, Rowling is one of the few authors who has been rejected by even more publishers than me. She keeps the dream alive for a multitude of would-be writers. And, even though I have now been published (buy my book Schokoherz at www.amazon.de) and am even a best seller in Germany (yay!) of course my real hope is that someday I will worm my way into a UK publisher’s heart, as she did, as she desperately sought to support her child as a single mother.
So Harry has huge significance for us. We’ve got the tapes, the quiz books, the lot. But, when I suggested going to see the latest film with my girls, they were all, ‘uh, yeah, mum, well, the thing is …we’re going to see it with friends ….’ Boo hoo. It’s a far cry from the days when Child Two begged to see it for her 5th birthday, then couldn’t sleep all night after braving the terrors of the basilisk. Or when Child One had a screening of the Goblet of Fire for her 8th birthday in Brussels, and I sat through trailers for Kill Bill and the Exorcist with a group of puzzled 8-year-olds, with me fervently hoping they wouldn’t mention the severed heads to their parents. I should have remembered that Belgium has a somewhat more lax view of film certificates and trailers, which more or less goes, ‘you can take your child to anything you like, but you’re on your own with the therapy afterwards.’
Ah well. I shall just have to drag TL to see it.