Harry Potter

Just before Thanksgiving, Eli and I started reading the first Harry Potter books. I read them before the kids were born, but haven't see any of the movies since the third one, and haven't touched the books in as long as Maddux has been alive. Eli has become interested due to exposure from his older friends, so I thought it was a good time to start the awesome series.

From the get-go, Eli was REALLY into the book. I read about a chapter each night (sometimes two nights if they were longer chapters), and we always started the reading by reviewing what had just happened. Eli could always tell me most everything that happened the night before. We finished the book last Friday, and watched the movie on Saturday. Eli was ecstatic.

One of my favorite parts of this whole process was seeing Eli 'see' the book in his head as we read it. He'd look at the tiny pictures at the start of each chapter, but usually he would tell me that the picture didn't look at all like he thought that character should look. When he finally saw the movie, he went into great detail with me about how different the movie was from the book. For him, Fluffy and Fang looked totally not like he expected, and he imagined the Quiddich field to be more like a soccer field with one hoop at each end. As Eli told me about this, his eyes were so animated...he was truly engaged. We've already started the second book....Eli can't wait to find out what Harry did to Dudley over the summer.