‘Sweetheart?” I prod her on the shoulder gently. She looks up distractedly from her book. “It’s time for lunch,” I tell her, gesturing towards the book in her hand, which she must now close and join the family. I see her slip the book discretely behind her back and throughout the meal, the book is open at a strange angle on her knee, held with her left hand as she surreptitiously reads while eating. She thinks I’m not aware but I watch her eyes moving swiftly across the concealed book and she knows I know but reads on the Famous Five novel anyway with a sheepish smile.
We have a “no screens on the table” policy but I wonder now if I will have to include books in the agreement too. My oldest one reminds me of myself a lot. I remember when Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book in the seven-part series came out I was 14. I was the biggest Potter-fan I knew — the orphaned boy-wizard in his magical world had me hooked and I would have given anything to get into Hogwarts. I had read the first three books so many times I could probably recite them verbatim from memory. The new 640-page book was eagerly devoured in a matter of three days and two nights. By the end of it I was a mess (much to my mother’s dismay), but I felt great. The rest of the series was read with a similar frenzy, but by the time the last book, The Deathly Hallows, came out, I had a year-old baby, and reading without a break was far trickier, but of course, I managed somehow.
This same baby is now ten years old and she adores reading. She was recently gifted a white Kindle reader for her birthday by her paternal grandparents with the entire Harry Potter series preloaded. I was, understandably, very excited. She’s loved all the books I loved as a child — Heidi, The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Pollyanna, Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl’s books to name a few, and I couldn’t wait to introduce her to J.K. Rowling’s masterpiece. I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t see her for the next few days as she would want to read the Harry Potter series like I did — all at once.
It was lovely to read the opening pages of The Sorcerer’s Stone together until she took over and was enjoying the book. I would finally be able to discuss Hogwarts and Hogsmeade with her, and we could do a little quiz to see who remembered more spells!
She finished the first book in a day or so and began reading The Chamber of Secrets. Then after a couple of days, I expected her to begin The Prisoner of Azkaban, but things had taken a different course. The Kindle was lying on her bedside and she was back to her Malory Towers. I was positively despondent. “What, you’re not reading Harry Potter?” I said ashen-faced. She shrugged. “I think the second book is a bit boring, honestly.” The book hadn’t even been read halfway through.
I began reading the book (again) from where she had stopped. It didn’t have the charm that it did when I was younger but it was fun all the same. It came as a bit of a shock that my daughter wasn’t glued to Harry Potter like I had been. The Potter-fan inside me was indignant, but the mother shrugged as though to say, “Well, it’s her life after all. She certainly wouldn’t like everything you did as a child.”
From that point on, I gave up trying to make her like the Harry Potter books, but I did have another sneaky plan. The movies! Over the weekend, I played The Chamber of Secrets and began watching it myself — all the while looking at her from the corner of my eye to see if she was interested. The plan worked! She plopped down beside me on the couch and began to watch. When we reached the place where she had given up on the book, I told her we could go on only if she’d read the written work first. She finished the book by the next day and has now embarked upon The Prisoner of Azkaban.
Harry Potter made up a huge chunk of my teenage and young adulthood and I’d love to share the fun of the enchanting series with my daughter, and relive an interesting part of my childhood. While I certainly hope that she gets nowhere near as obsessed as I did, I do hope she discovers all of what goes on inside the mysterious magical world and appreciates the literary genius that is J.K. Rowling.
Mehmudah Rehman is a Dubai-based freelance writer.
