Dumbledore's Army

As I was walking through Rockefeller Plaza at lunch on Friday, I saw a group of teenage girls with their Harry Potter books, and one of them was wearing a “Dumbledore’s Army” t-shirt, as though it was a rock band. And the pure joy this brought me, the excitement that a book—A BOOK!—could still enthrall kids this way, could make them that enthusiastic about reading, well, it just about made by heart burst. On behalf of teachers, librarians, and book lovers everywhere, I hope someone, somewhere, just gave J.K. Rowling a big, wet, sloppy kiss.

My sister Denise and my nephews Jon and Dan (ages 18 and 15) are coming to New York on Friday for the book’s on-sale, and we’re meeting up with my friend Jeanine and her son, and the whole bunch of us are Harry Potter party-hopping downtown. We’ll ooh and aah over the people in costumes, and have a blast, and then at midnight stand in line for our copies of the book. The crowds will be ridiculous, and I’m not only willing to deal with them, I’m thrilled. Just the thought of all those grownups and kids coming together over the love of a book kind of makes me teary. As Polly would say, “These are my people.”

Tom Campbell is co-owner of the Regulator Bookshop in Durham, N.C. It’s one of those fabulous independent bookstores that everyone in the industry knows and respects. He wrote the following in his store newsletter, and captured the spirit perfectly. He, too, is obviously one of my people.

"This is the last Harry Potter book, and it will quite likely be the last time in any of our lifetimes that people will line up, in the middle of the night, all across the country, and all across the world, to buy a book. To 'see what happens next' in a story. The only other time this has ever happened, as far as I know, was with Charles Dickens more than 150 years ago when crowds waited on the quays in New York for the ship carrying the latest installment of The Old Curiosity Shop to dock, calling out to the passengers and crew, 'Is Little Nell dead?'
"We don't yet know who is going to die in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but we do know that more than a million Harry Potter readers are dead to the real significance of this event. These are the people who ordered their books from Amazon, and who at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, July 21, will be home asleep, waiting for the UPS delivery of their book the next day, or two days later, or whenever it arrives. They are indeed getting a great deal on the price of their book, but sometimes in life you get what you pay for. And sometimes you also get an experience that is truly priceless, a once in a lifetime kind of thing."