Anyone, who grew up in the early 2000s, can agree that The Harry Potter Series written by J.K Rowling, is the ultimate childhood book. The series started in the late 90s, when the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was released in 1997 and series unfolded into 7 novels, a play and a series of short stories, which are connected to the original book series. But the craze of it didn't start, until 2001 the first book was transformed and it became the second biggest film franchise worldwide.
The writer and creator of the series, J.K Rowling, said she discovered the idea, while she was travelling back from Manchester to London on a crowed train, in the early 90s. At the time of her discovery, She wasn't able to write the idea down, but she spent that entire journey thinking about details and the character of Harry Potter began to come to life and it became a story about a boy, who didn't know he was a wizard. One event in her lifetime that heavily influenced the story and the character of Harry Potter in greater detail was the death of her her mother, which transformed the story and was then developed into a young wizard boy, who lost his parents at an early age, but didn’t know he was a wizard.
The Harry Potter series was the reason why kids would enjoy reading for fun. This was at a time, where they would watch cartoons in their leisure time, instead of reading and learning something new. They would read the books because it had the balance of real life and the magical world and the readers would learn with the character, throughout the series. In a study done by Scholastic, that have stated that kids and parents credit the series for getting more kids into reading and that it helped kids do better in school.
For some people, who read the books first before watching the films, used our imagination to think about; how those characters would dress ?, what they would look like?, how they would cast spells?… etc We created an image of what these characters were like and when we watched the films afterwards, we saw those characters come to life on the big screen and we could instantly relate to them because the actors that portrayed these characters were kids like us. As they grew up in the films, we did too and it became our childhood journey together.
Even after the last film and book; The Deathly Hallows was created, “The Harry Potter experience” has still reminded with us with The Harry Potter Studios, which was opened in 2012 in Leavesden. The Studio Tour includes the props, sets and costumes used throughout the series.
This year, House of Minalima, a shop and exhibition in London opened their doors to display the graphic art, as well as the authentic props that were used in the films. These were on loan from the The Harry Potter Studios in Leavesden. Having all of this in one space, gives the fans more appreciation to the details used throughout the series and see how it call came together.
At the end of the day, we all have some sort of personal connection to the series and if it wasn’t for J.K Rowling, this series would not part our childhood and part of who we are now.
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