Avada Kedavra! Expecto Partronum! Imperio! There was a time when these words would be considered nonsense or gibberish. Nowadays, everyone knows the meanings of these spells. When Halloween rolls around, children of all ages dress up as the familiar wizard with a lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead. This high school class is the generation that has lived and breathed Harry Potter throughout their life.
“I own all [of the books and movies].” said Logan Shayna. Shayna is a sophomore at Community High. He is a large fan of the Harry Potter series and says that it had a big impact on him in his childhood. “I think [my childhood] would be worse without Harry Potter.” Shayna said. Shayna says that he is disappointed that the series is over, but has moved on to other books. “I read the Percy Jackson series now,” said Shayna.
As well as being a great source of entertainment, J.K Rowling’s series also inspired a generation of writers. “It helped me become more creative and it gave me an understanding of what you can do with words,” said Griffin Roy, a freshmen, “After reading the series, I was more accosstomed to the Fantasy genre.” Roy first read the series at the age of seven, but said that he didn’t really understand it until he was a little older. “It’s something to base imagination off of,” he said, “Harry Potter was a creative, fun thing that I had never encountered before. It was kind of different, but it was set in our time.”
We all know the story of JK Rowling’s series Harry Potter. How she was just a poor single mother that began to write the story on a napkin. How her story was continually rejected until it was finally picked up and turned into a worldwide phenomenon and spawned a multi-billion dollar movie series. If not for that unlikely turn of events, the fantastic story today would not be around. Not all people have the same outlook as Shayna and Roy though. “I liked the books fine, but they weren’t like a special part of my life or anything,” said Issac Scoby-Thal. Scoby-Thal has read five of the seven Harry Potter books and has seen all of the films. He said that although he thought the material was entertaining, it didn’t really affect his childhood. When asked if he planned on reading the last two installments to the series, Scoby-Thal shook his head, “I don’t think so. With school reading and I want to read other stuff for fun, I don’t think I’ll ever get to it. Maybe when I’m older.”
Emma Sowder, a freshmen at Community, had the same view as Scoby-Thal. Sowder started reading the series at the end of eighth grade, so she didn’t really grow up with it. “[The Harry Potter series] wasn’t that big since I started it recently,” she said. Sowder said that even though the end of the series was saddening, she wasn’t thrown into emotional tumoil. She just moved on. “I just pick up books and see if I like them” she said.
