Harry Potter Turns 20 Today
June 26, 1997 – 20 years ago today – the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released. And the worlds of literature, pop entertainment and nerd culture would be affected forever.
I write for a living. I’ve had one book published and am pregnant with my second. And I stand in awe at anyone who is capable of creating a piece of fiction that becomes universal. For example, stop the next person you see, regardless of their age, gender or where they’re from and randomly ask “Who’s the Cowardly Lion?” and they’ll know exactly whom you’re talking about. Hop a plane to any airport in the world in a Darth Vader tee and everyone in the terminal will recognize him. And that’s what J.K. Rowling produced 20 years ago.
I read an article about Lord of the Rings that said the world J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about is so complete, it’s like he didn’t create it. It already existed and he just discovered it. And that’s how I look at the Harry Potter series. It’s so fully realized, with devices so clever, characters so developed, words and phrases so perfect and moments that hit you so much in the feels, it’s hard to wrap your brain around the fact one woman came up with them sitting at a desk. An out of work mom who famously was on public assistance in England and later paid all the money she’d collected back to the government after she made it rich. But she did. And left an imprint on world culture that is indelible.
I was a little late to the party on the first book. I first heard about it from a sister-in-law who worked at a bookstore and mentioned this hugely popular seller. But my only son at the time was only one year old so there was no incentive to get into it. By the time he was like four and there was talk of a movie being made, I gave reading it to him. And was hooked from Chapter One. A huge appeal for me was that I just simply love words. And Rowling practically created her own language. Muggle. Hogwarts. Dumbledore. Quidditch. Hufflepuff. Voldemort. Wingardium Leviosa. And I scarcely doubt in the past 15 years that I’ve gone a full day without using at least one Rowling word. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I have been to a Harry Potter-themed party that had no kids at it. Where I made a kickass Mad Eye Moody and we fired down Expecto Patron-shots. Don’t judge me.
Of course you can’t talk HP without mentioning the most successful series of movies of all time.
Rowling kept creative control over the movies. To the point when Steven Spielberg wanted to do the first one starring Haley Joel Osmont, she told him where he could shove a Nimbus 2000, insisting on unknown British kids in the leads. Thank God. Because whatever flaws some of the movies have, the producers did heroic work casting. And the kids who were like 10-years-old at their auditions all grew up to be phenomenal actors by the eighth one. And the adults were perfection. By the time the movies landed, the challenge for a dad tired at the end of his day reading 30 pages to his kid at bedtime was remembering how to do Alan Rickman’s Snape inflections and how I pulled off Emma Watson’s Hermoine voice the night before.
But back to the books. I’ve literally been at a pool in the middle of summer witnessing three cousins sitting side-by-side each reading a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I worked with a guy who had never read word one or seen a minute of the movies. Until he took his kid to the HP theme park at Universal Orlando. Then he immediately read all the books cover to cover. And there is a professional Quidditch league. For real. All because one woman with an imagination, a gift for words, and an understanding of universal childhood themes that resonate with everyone (the part where Dumbledore explains the magic that protected Harry from He Who Shall Not Be Named was a mother’s love? Waterworks), sat down one day and began to write them down. As Dumbledore himself would say, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”