The last two or three weeks of television news were completely dominated by tales of the world's favorite boy wizard, Harry Potter. Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows much-hyped release, possible leaks and general Potter mania drowned out all other, legitimate news stores. (Like, oh, I don't know... our failure in Iraq, the continued immoral and illegal behavior of our executive branch, and airplane disaster, two colliding helicopters, murders and a couple of kidnappings.) But who cares anyway? We're talking about the final Harry Potter, right?And what was the general reaction of the public at large, after reading the book? A collective, let-down shrug. I know several people who stayed up late, into the wee hours of the night to finish the book, and they all had the same reaction: Ehhh. Not that it was awful, but it wasn't spectacular.
So now what? Will this past decade and a half period of reading enthusiasm translate into anything else? Will the children of the world continue to read, finding other books to stimulate their imagination, furthering their emotional and academic growth? Will they grow, as readers and as people, to explore new horizons in and outside the boundaries of fiction? Or are they caught up in the book-turned-movie hype machine; is this a one-time, last-ditch effort by our society to redeem its academic soul; the last gasp of our movement towards an intelligent society, one in which we value reading, imagination and the spirit of the free individual?
Where is Professor Sybil when you need her?
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