A Love of Reading Inspired by the Harry Potter Series

Jordan’s Journal: Harry Potter taught me to love reading. (Hudson Star-Observer, 7/22/2011)

Excerpt: Since the day I picked up “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” I have been reading as much as I can as often as I can. I have spent many a late night with my bed-side lamp burning bright to get through just a few more pages or stayed inside on a sunny Saturday afternoon reading instead of going outside to play.

When the series was made into movies, I couldn’t have been happier. The movies only added to my love of the books and projected the world I had seen only inside my own mind for so many years onto the big screen. I was seeing my favorite series in theaters and could relive the stories I had enjoyed so much in book form over and over again. It made me all the more anxious for the rest of the novels to come out.

I can remember the day that the last book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” that I had preordered months before, arrived at my door. After I had the book in my hands, I disappeared into my room for the next few days until I had read all there was to read all the way to the last word on the final page that brought a conclusion to one of my favorite series of all time.

At the time, I knew I still had the rest of the Harry Potter movies to look forward so it did not really feel like the end. But with the final film installment of the Harry Potter epic now out in theaters, there is no way to deny that it is all over, once and for all.

Last Friday, July 15, marked the end of an era for me and all the other young adults who grew up on the stories of a teenage wizard who defied remarkable odds and became a hero. It will be hard to say goodbye to the world of Harry Potter given how much joy it has supplied me with over the years. There will never be another book that will do for me what J.K. Rowling’s series has.

It is incredible to think that there was ever a time when I hated to read. Books have become a huge part of my life and have made me who I am today. I owe a lot to J.K. Rowling and the universe she created. It is hard to consider how different my life would be if Mrs. Wiora had never read Harry Potter to my fourth-grade class or if Rowling had never put pen to paper and written the masterpiece that is Harry Potter.