The Magic of Families Reading Together

The San Jose Mercury News has been featuring a series of articles leading up to this weekend's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows release:

Beyond the sales numbers, one also can argue that no other book has gotten more families to read together, or been more discussed in print, on the Internet, in bookstores and libraries, and around office water coolers.

Valerie Lewis of Hicklebee's was working for CBS in New York when she became one of the first major media journalists to bring attention to Rowling and Harry Potter. She remembers being happily surprised, as a bookseller, by the reaction to "Sorcerer's Stone."

"That families suddenly discovered that reading together made sense was probably the biggest shock of all to us."

"There's nothing I can think of that compares to reading aloud to children and having them read aloud to you," Lewis says. "What happens is you get to know them at a whole different level. The literary stuff, the academic stuff, is not as important as sitting around finding out what they think."

And at a time when children are bombarded with images from television, movies and video games, Lewis values the way literature gives children the experience of creating images themselves. (Read the full article here.)

Oh, and there are more images to come! Remember to celebrate with Book Passage in Corte Madera starting Friday night at 9:00 pm! Preorder your copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and $10 of your purchase will be donated to The Giving Tree Program, which will help underprivileged children receive Potter books.