Not sure if it's incorrect even now two months later to discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows...so if you haven't read it....
Last night Naomi and I finished the last Harry Potter book. Ilana informs me that I had purchased Book 1 for her very early on and we bought the second book in its UK edition prior to its publication in the US. Eight year old Naomi wanted it read out loud. We started with Book 1 reading each one of them aloud. Naomi is now nearly 18 but she STILL wanted this last book (all 600+ pages) read aloud. She was willing to postpone her Harry Potter experience until she came home from camp.
With prior readings, our large gentle dog (now nearly deaf) would trot into Naomi's room and climb onto Naomi's bed on hearing me exclaim "Harry Potter!" She has heard Books 1-7 though I wouldn't quiz her on them.
The Deathly Hallows was a little slow going in the first half. Naomi summarized the entire plot up to page 350 or so as
"Oh! What ARE we doing??""
"(frustrated shriek) I don't KNOW!!"
At the end, Johhny Depp would have been disgusted at the amount of exposition (see the writer's commentary on Pirates of the Caribbean). All of that explanation smashed into the final chapters would have kept our overall attention a lot better if revealed earlier in the book. The wand methodology rules confusedly swims in my mind. I welcomed the ambiguity of Dumbledore's character. I knew that Petunia would show up again. Snape always was with us. The epilogue (labeled 'lame' by the teenage readers around me) demonstrates that we all just grow up and become middle aged. Or we hope so.
1 comment:
I bet the dogs knows more than she will ever tell you!
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