Harry Potter

For me, I’ll never forget about when I first started reading the Harry Potter, the daunting seven book series, written by author J.K. Rowling. We used to have a book club that we met with everyday in for about an hour in elementary school. Every student was required to take a test to see how many words you could read a minute. The outcome of this test determined if you were put in a book club group in a higher grade or if you stayed in your same grade. I was in third grade at the time and my test score was high enough to be with the fifth graders. That year the Harry Potter series was the focus, so we started off with the first book, The Sorcerer’s Stone. While reading this book at a young age, I truly realized how much power a book has. The detail, the description and the wordplay are the things that stand out when reading a Harry Potter book. J.K. Rowling made it seem as if we attended Hogwarts. Platform 9 ¾ seemed as it was far from a myth, but in fact a reality. Rowling was so good at creating moments that I used to wear a regular baseball hat, while imagining it was the sorting hat from the book. We read the first book, then we tackled Prisoner of Askaban; needless to say, I finished the rest of the series as time went on. To this day I still reread some of the books because the movies just aren’t as detailed. That’s an issue I’ve been hearing about ever since I started reading. Books vs movies. Which do you prefer? It will always be books for me. There’s so many different situations and events that go on in books that will never make it to the big screen. When I tell people about my Harry Potter addiction, the first thing they always say they watch the movies instead because the books are too long. Little do they know, all the facts and details are in the book, not the movie. But isn’t that the case with most books anyways? There’s an infinite amount of information and character description an author can pour into a book; however, there is a restriction on the amount of attention a character can get a movie. With books, there is so much time to really go in-depth with each and every character. This experience alone enables the reader to share a bond with one or more of the characters in the story. Sure, you can do this with the characters in the movie, but only to a certain extent. The imagery, diction, syntax, etc. are the style choices that separates a book from its movie. A book full of vivid detail can make the reader feel as if they are there in that moment of time. By doing this, it helps the reader empathize with the characters by stepping in the character’s shoes for a moment. This keeps the reader engaged and alert while continuing to read the book.