Photo A Day, Day 15: I'm Reading This

I’ve always been an avid reader. My mom told me that I learned to read well before kindergarten, and I don’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t in the middle of some book or another (and often more than one at a time). I loved getting to know the characters in a book, and I was sad whenever I got to the end of a book, because there were no more adventures to be had with them. And then I discovered the joys of book SERIES. I didn’t have to abandon my friends at the end of the book, because there was another one to start in on right afterwards! Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, the Pevensie children, Trixie Belden, Anne Shirley, and Laura Ingalls kept having adventure after adventure, and I was right by their sides, eagerly awaiting each new installment.

So when my son began to read on his own recently, I began to think about the kind of books we could read together over the coming months and years. I looked back through the beloved books of my own childhood; I recalled the delightful new children’s books I discovered later in life through my mom, a children’s librarian; and I browsed through bookstores looking for interesting stories to share.

During all this research, I naturally pored over my own eclectic book collection, both my legion of hard copies and my growing Kindle collection. I leafed fondly through my boxed set of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia (my third set, having loved the first two to the point of disintegration), I pulled out my dog-eared copy of The Phantom Tollbooth, I set aside my copy of The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes for Easter reading. But the books I kept returning to, the ones I kept wondering impatiently when my son would be ready to read, were my Harry Potter collection.

I pulled one of the books off the shelf; it happened to be Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I meant to just read a few lines, yet once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. The beauty of re-reading old favorites, of course, is that you can jump in at any point and know exactly what’s happened so far. So it didn’t matter that the particular book I chose was in the middle of the series; I have read and loved these books so well that I might as well have read the preceding book the day before. I was merely rejoining old friends.

Not surprisingly, as soon as I finished re-reading that book, I couldn’t help but grab the next book in the series.

It is a sign of a well-written book that reading it is just as enjoyable when you already know what is about to happen as it is when the ending is a complete mystery. I know the fates of every character in the book; yet I eagerly turn each page, excited to let their story unfold before me yet again. It is like taking a journey on a familiar and well-used road; I know where I’m going and what I’ll see on the way, but I still like to watch the road going past, wondering if I might spy some little detail I’ve missed all the other times I’ve passed by. I never know what new delight I might discover when I’m reading this.

The Parental Perspective

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been re-reading the Harry Potter books. For those of you who’ve lived under a rock for the past decade or so, this is a series of seven books that follow a young wizard from age 11 to age 18 as he fights dark wizardry. The main characters are his fellow students, but of course there are plenty of adult characters: the professors and staff at his school, his friends’ parents, his parents’ friends, and even the adult dark wizards. I began reading the series of books about ten years ago, when I was single and childless, and although I was much older than Harry and his friends, as I read about their exploits, I imagined myself in their shoes, recalling when I was that age and wondering how I would have behaved in a similar situation. But reading the books again now, I see the entire series with fresh eyes: the eyes of a mother.

The most traditionally motherly character in the book is Harry’s best friend Ron’s mum, Mrs. Weasley. Mrs. Weasley is a short, plump, sweetly fussy mum, the kind who spits in a handkerchief to wipe dust off her son’s nose, feeds anyone who’ll let her, is kind and welcoming to all her children’s friends, and turns into a snarling, protective mother bear when any of her children are threatened. She serves as a bit of comic relief early in the series, fussing about in that sweet but annoying way that moms do, going ballistic over what the children perceive as minor infractions, and getting embarrassingly emotional over their accomplishments (or the lack thereof). The reader is invited to like her but also to laugh at her a bit. But now that I have a child of my own, I don’t laugh at her at all. I can picture myself in her shoes, fretting about sending my child off into the wild and dangerous unknown of the world.

The professors, as well, were simply “stage fill”, as theater people term all the non-specific bodies in crowd scenes who don’t have notable personalities but who serve merely to take up space. But again, as I re-read the books from a parental perspective, I can see their desires to shape and mold young minds, I can sympathize with their frustrations at student inattention and thickheadedness, and I can understand their pride in seeing their students mature from timid children into self-assured young adults. No longer are they in the background, merely taking up space, but instead they all serve as crucial role models and instructors for their students.

I’m that much more impressed with the depth and detail of the books, since they are so complete and true-to-life when read from both perspectives. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that – after all, the author is a mother, too.