Joanne Rowling

Dear Joanne Rowling,

I was in fourth grade, and perhaps nine or ten years old at the time, when I got my hands on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I remember being excited and just as equally terrified as I opened that book and began to read. All of my friends had been reading the book and absolutely loved it, while my parents had told me that it was not something I would ever be allowed to read due to it clashing with their religious beliefs. You can then imagine my apprehension with sneaking a copy home from the school library, hidden behind my math folder inside my book bag, and reading it under cover of night in my room.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to read. In elementary school I would get my books taken away in class because I’d rather be lost in a story than paying attention to the lesson plan. However, as often as I would make trips to the library to check out another book, I never found a novel or book series that really grabbed my attention for longer than a few weeks at most. That’s why, when I finished the very first chapter of Sorcerer’s Stone all those years ago and kept going until I was nodding off with my face in the book, I knew that the story of this orphaned boy with messy hair and a scar was special. However, I don’t think I quite realized at the time how much the Harry Potter series would grow to be a part of my life for years to come.

When you put aside the magic aspect of the series, there are still a lot of valuable lessons to be learned (the importance of love and friendship and honesty, to name a few). I think many people miss out on these due to focusing on the fact that it is labeled a book series meant for children about wizards and such. There’s no rule written down that says kid stories aren’t capable of encompassing life guidelines, after all.

The importance of doing what is right rather than what is easy, even when others push you to side with them is the biggest thing that I’ve taken away from Harry’s story. If Harry had simply given up and stopped fighting, stopped caring for his friends and the fate of everyone else to join the evil side just because it was easier, the story would have ended far differently and not in a good way either. I’ve learned through all of the trials the characters go through during the course of the series that life is hard, it is not always fair, and good may not always prevail over bad but you can’t just give up. I credit my will to keep fighting and never quit to these books. I’m a much stronger person today because of this.

I am now seventeen years old, and a senior in high school. In less than one month I will be going to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part one on opening night at the movie theater with my friends and family, all of whom are avid Potter lovers (yes, my parents came around to Team Potter as well, much to my relief). I own every single Harry Potter book and have read them multiple times, the spines of them well bent with use and a few pages now slightly dog-eared or stained with occasional inky fingerprints. Of course I am teased by my other more “serious” peers for admitting that Harry Potter is my favorite book series. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t dare change it. I’ve grown up right alongside the small boy who lived in a cupboard under the stairs for eleven years of his life, and in a way I can relate to Harry, Ron and Hermione better than I can people my own age.

The story of Harry Potter has essentially been my entire childhood, contained within the pages of seven wonderful books. Your incredibly, magical story has made me very happy for many years, and will continue to do so until I’m old and in my rocker. There are things in life you never forget, and this story is one of them. I can only hope that the future generations of children will read your story and gain as much as I have from it.

Sincerely,

Kaitlyn Graves

Learning Independence.

I should probably start this off by saying that I’m really not a complete social hermit. I enjoy talking to people just as much as anyone else does, probably more if you ask anyone who‘s seen me outside of school. I just have trouble with getting a conversation going and letting people in to see the real me behind the stupid shy shell that I have. I truly do enjoy having friends and being able to count on someone when I need it.

However, at the same time I’ve learned to never depend on someone entirely. It’s okay to trust people, because you’ll be miserable if you don’t. At the same time though, you have to be a little independent. It’s okay to be able to function by yourself and not depend on constant attention and reassurances like a little kid. This is something that I have, unfortunately, learned through a lot of trial and error.

Maybe this is a little bit pessimistic of me…okay, more than a little. But the experience of having someone who you always thought would love you and care about you flat out say that you mean nothing to them anymore can change you a lot. It happened to me after all.

As cliché and barf-worthy, teenage romance as this is going to sound, I let a boy with too long blond hair and big brown eyes get an emotional hold on me and I thought it was all good. Scott was his name, and yes, he was my boyfriend for six months but before that he had been one of my best friends since middle school. I’ve told him things that no one else has ever heard about me, and he will be the only person alive to ever have heard those things. In retrospect, it was probably unwise to place that much trust in him but what can you do?

Anyway, as with most teenage relationships it just fizzled out on my end so I broke it off. Of course there was all the usual moping from him for a while, but we still hung out and talked all the time. We were great friends despite everything, and when I told him I was moving away to Homedale he assured me about a hundred different times that nothing was going to change.

Yeah, because things always seem to work out just as someone says they will, right? Life is never that simple.

Now, fast forward about a year and imagine how it felt, stomach sinking as if I’d eaten a handful of lead, when I was informed by him that he no longer knew if I meant anything to him because he’d “changed a lot”. Really, dude? You’re going to pull that crap now, after all the other fights and break ups and things we’ve gone through? I’ve changed like you wouldn’t believe since I left Fruitland, but I’m not going to be a jerk and stop being your friend over it! Ugh!

In turn, this all got me to thinking that maybe I had been too insensitive during the whole breakup. Maybe it had hurt him worse than it had me somehow. I brooded over it for a ridiculous amount of time, and thinking back on it I kind of want to kick myself for doing so. I can’t imagine myself doing that now, and I’m really glad for it.

For a long time I was absolutely crushed over this revelation. As I said, it’s difficult for me to let people in and trust them entirely, especially people my own age. I felt like someone had literally stolen a piece of me. Not in the heartbroken girl sense, but in the sense that I had lost someone I could truly trust no matter what. It was as if I no longer had a port in the storm or a place to confide when my thoughts grew too cumbersome to be dealt with alone.

Then, like the epiphany of a lifetime or something, I realized that I do not need to always have someone to lean on. Sure, it’s nice to have support when times are tough and life wears me down, but I’m independent. I’m a very strong willed young woman and I’m not going to waste my time pining for the loss of him. I’m going to keep my head up and go on with life. Looking to the past only keeps me blind to the future and potentially better things that will come along.

It was the ending of a good friendship, I will admit. Perhaps someday it will be mended, and perhaps it won’t. Either way, it really helped me change and develop into the person that I am now. I suppose in a really messed up way I owe him a word of thanks. Not that he’ll ever get it, hah. It’s the thought that counts in this case, I believe.

Disney, what are you doing?

The Disney version of the book Huckleberry Finn is a…laughable example of a book-turned-film. There are a few points in the movie that kept true to events in the novel, such as Pap kidnapping Huck and Huck running off with Jim, but the way that the movie carries these things out ruins the overall effect that it’s supposed to have upon the audience.

One major change, and one that ultimately ruined the ending for me, was the absence of Tom Sawyer. Sure, maybe we were spared from his annoying antics and all that jazz, but at the same time Tom was a vital part to not only wrapping the story up but revealing a little more about Huck’s character. In the book, Huckleberry seems to be an independent young man until he’s around Tom. Whenever he does get together with his friend, he becomes soft spoken and easy to manipulate. The movie totally misses this character trait for Huck, instead making him out to be a strong willed kid who does as he pleases. Don’t even get me started on how the film ended versus the book. It was rushed and seemed as if it had been slapped together at the last minute. It was terribly overdone with dramatics, to be honest. That’s Disney for you though, I suppose.

Another difference was the relationship between Huck and Jim. Twain had not put his story together to portray the two of them as best buddies from the very beginning. At the start of everything Huck and Jim were acquaintances at best, and slowly grew closer and trusted one another more as the story progressed and they went through a lot of troubles together. Once again, Disney took the cheery side of things and made it so Huck and Jim got along perfectly from the very start. That really did take away from the character development of Huck and Jim, because watching their trust for each other get stronger was an interesting part of the novel.

Then, of course, the overall tone of the movie was sheer corniness with how there seemed to be a constant undertone of comedy in even the “serious” scenes (such as Peter Wilks’ mouth randomly being open as he's laying there dead in his casket). Twain intended for his book to be humorous, true, but to also have serious situations and to show people how dangerous it was for Huck to be helping Jim escape to freedom. Not surprisingly, Disney pushed the serious side of the story to the back burner in favor of laughs. Really, the epic slow motion “BILLY!” thing? I don’t know how anyone could have possibly taken that seriously. I sure didn’t, even though it was, admittedly, hilarious.