Do you have a Harry Potter fan in your household?
One way to keep kids reading is to take a book series further than the books, themselves. I’ve talked a lot about that on this blog — I call them “book extensions” and they can be movies (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/Willie Wonka is a good one; Alice in Wonderland is another) or fan fiction (short stories using the characters, written by fans) or myriad other offshoots.
There’s been a wonderful discussion about a Harry Potter theory, first posited by Graphic Nerdity on Tumblr. In a nutshell it’s this: Were the Dursleys awful people, or (wait for it) was their rotten disposition because they were living for 10 years with a horcrux in their house … aka, Harry Potter (who was, theoretically at least, an “unofficial” horcrux)? After all, the fans theorize, exposure to horcruxes over time makes you — well, awful.
Exposure to the ring in Lord of the Rings has the same effect.
Anyway, there are two camps: Those who think that being around Harry was enough to make them become awful, and those who think they were just plain awful to begin with, and Harry’s presence had no effect on them.
If you think this is just a cute little debate between a couple of kids, know this: 140,000 people have already weighed in on Tumblr about it.
There’s a great piece on this debate in the UK’s The Independent.
And here’s a Buzzfeed version of the theory, in easy-to-digest GIFs.
And … is Harry Potter a horcrux? And if so, how did he become one? Got you covered on that as well: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:How_exactly_did_harry_become_a_horcrux%3F
