Harry Potter and the Filthy Rich Author
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Hogwarts and Muggles and give me a break. All this Harry Potter crap is driving me nuts. People waiting on line for 14 hours, let me correct that, adults forcing their kids to wait with them on line for 14 hours to buy the first book available at midnight. Harry Potter parties. Otherwise normal adults dressed up and speaking it that fake wizard voice. Give me a break.
Look, I am glad that kids are reading and not playing video games. I get that. They talk about that benefit all the time. Good for them. But how about this. Get those kids off the couch and outside. Because while reading is good, you are taking some fat lethargic kid sitting cross legged on the floor playing Grand Theft Auto, drinking Mountain Dew and eating Doritos, and moving him to the couch, where they sit cross legged next to an end table with a lamp on, reading a book about witches and warlocks, drinking Mountain Dew and eating Doritos. I am not knocking the idea of reading, it’s just that maybe we should try to break it up a little. I am by no means an expert, but this is what I would do if my kids were old enough to read. I would dedicate an hour or two a night after dinner to sit with them and take turns reading. We would shut off the TV, turn down the radio, and sit on the couch reading Harry Potter or, I don’t know, maybe a biography on Amelia Earheart or one on history. It might not be as much fun as turning mean kids into toads and flying on a swiftvac, but something tells me if I spent the time to do it, it would mean something to my kids. The rest of the day, that being the morning, afternoon and dinner time, the kids would be outside playing, doing activities, and other creative tasks that gave them a little more exercise than turning a page.
I am not bashing the idea of reading a book. If some 10 year old wants to sit in his room all weekend reading a Harry Potter book, good for them. It’s better than watching TV or playing video games. Fantasy books are great because it helps to expand the creative thinking of children. It enables a child to realize there are other things than the small world they live in. But this insane frenzy over the book is crazy and it bugs me.
Oh, one other things. How about this for a title of a Harry Potter book – Harry Potter and the Filthy Rich Author. While it is charming to think JK Rowling’s motive is purely altruistic, something tells me book 7 will help pay for the gold covering in the champagne glass holders for her three helicopters to take her between her 7 mansions. She is worth over a billion dollars on Harry Potter and we all know her story. On welfare. Wrote the book on napkins. Sat nursing a cup of coffee at a diner. Blah blah blah. She writes these books because kids whine so much their parents buy them. Or, and this is the case in my house, the parents (my wife) love the books so much they order them to be delivered on the exact day they are available. Do you think young Stevie in urban East Boston or Harlem is waiting at the local Barnes and Noble to get his copy? His parents are lucky to afford his school books. But look at some affluent suburb outside of Chicago and you have thousands of bratty kids buying 5 books so they can tell their bratty friends at Little Princess Day Camp on Monday morning how they had one copy for each bedroom in their house. Here’s an idea. Write a book called Harry Potter and the Poor Kid Who Could Care Less Because He Is Hungry and Cold and give it away for free. Do that Ms. Rawlings.