let me on the hogwarts express ...

Getting old:

The song "Pretty Girl" made me blush while listening to the radio yesterday.

Perspectives:

We drove to and through Waianae this past weekend ... I imagined teaching homeless kids, he imagined fishing all day. We agreed that kids should be outdoors more often than they are glued to their Gameboys (and why is it that the same kids who are first to own a PSP come to school without basic supplies?)

Discovery:

The most bang for your soda buck can be found at 7-Eleven. But you have to be okay with fountain.

Secret:

I love being back at work.

You think ... :

... she's trying to be the next famous jailbird?

I agree:

Harry Potter, as unreadable as the series is to me, is possibly the best thing that's ever happened to children's literature. Not because they're the greatest books or the most fantastic characters ever written - but because of what the whole thing has done for reading as a concept. Harold Bloom can piss up a rope - J.K. Rowling has made non-readers READ, and even if Harry Potter's value were purely escapist, seriously, why else do people read fiction? Even if it leads kids straight to Cornelia Funke (who in her own right is a genius), it's stupid and unfair to assume that kids will never get to Kipling (if you choose to use Kipling as your barometer for literary quality. I mean, I personally loved Rikki-Tikki-Tavi as a kid, and so do many other kids today, proving that you don't need Harry Potter to get to Rudyard Kipling.) Cornelia Funke's Inkheart Trilogy might lead kids back to the classic Indian in the Cupboard (by a British author, like Harry Potter and The Jungle Book), which might lead to an author study in which kids would find out that Lynne Reid Banks was evacuated to Saskatchewan during World War II, but then returned to London. Other famous British authors of children's literature ... Frances Hodgson Burnett (A Little Princess), Kenneth Grahame (Wind in the Willows), AA Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh). My two favorites? J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Now, who cannot see a child going straight from Harry Potter to The Lord of the Rings? My small point is that all literature has value and that Harold Bloom is an idiot. Although I've finished exactly one Harry Potter book, I've seen from up close so many kids get swept in and away since 1997 that I feel a sense of loss along with the true fans, now that the series is over. I want to know what J.K. Rowling is doing next but have stayed away from websites and articles that might contain any sort of spoiler for Deathly Hallows ...