If anyone is interested in the HP band Phenom.Harry and the Potters ,Draco and the Malfoys,The Hungarian Horntails and More.

Wed nite in Philly,Thur nite in NY and Boston Book release show in Boston..thanks for your time

Mike

I think this sentence really summarizes the point of the article:

"Harry and the Potters have had such a galvanizing effect on their audiences that a huge proportion of the kids who've seen the DeGeorges rock a library have, in turn, started their very own bands. In time, its likely that hundreds of bands and musicians will rise in the Potters' wake."

At a time when the music industry is in meltdown, and just five or six years ago "rock" was supposed to be dead (again), you have a nationwide movement of kids who are not only picking up guitars and scribbling lyrics in notebooks, but mixing, producing, marketing, and selling their original music, as well as booking their own tours and helping other bands do the same. That is truly remarkable, and something we should all be very happy about this. Even all the crabs and cranks on here who poo-poo anything anyone does, because nobody should ever do anything ever.

In fact, quite a few people took Robert Plant to task for submitting to the fairy-ass silliness of Professor Tolkien (his trilogy-plus is a latecoming and still problematic addition to the canon).

If only the Wizard bands rocked as hard as Zep (or even as hard as the Airplane)!

I dug the passage ..thanks ..Neverending Story just went on my read list..

Let the kids (and the adults for that matter) rock any way they can..Noone complained about inspirational reading when Led Zeppelin sang about Lord of the Rings .Or Grace Slick with Alice in Wonderland..

Everybody have a nice night..

First: everyone needs inspiration, so whether it's JK Rowling or a beautiful day, it's a take-off point.

Second: Many of these artists have other bands (sometimes more than one other). They're taking their inspiration from all sorts of places.

I do agree with you--they should rock on!

What does the Wordsworthian passage you quote have to do with the discussion re: creeping Potterism?

Let kids rock out as much as they like. But let them come up with tropes on their own, not through the agency of JK Rowling.

I highly recommend the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Philip Pulman, "The Dark is Rising" by Susan Cooper and if you feel up to it read to them "The Sword in the Stone" by T.H. White.

I recommend the "reading to" experience very highly even for older children. It doesn't have to be "The Sword in the Stone." That is what my father read to me as it was one of the "magical books" from his boyhood. If you have a "magical book" that you remember from your young days, read that to your children, chances are it will become one of theirs too.

When I read this article I'm reminded of a passage I read as child in The Neverending Story. So I quote from Micheal Ende because I don't think I could say it better than this...

Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. Some people risk their lives to conquer a mountain peak. No one, not even they themselves, can really explain why. Others ruin themselves trying to win the heart of a certain person who wants nothing to do with them. Still others are destroyed by their devotion to the pleasure of the table. Some are so bent winning a game of chance that they lose everything they own, and some sacrifice everything for a dream that can never come true. Some think their only hope of happiness lies in being somewhere else, and spend their whole lives traveling from place to place. And some find no rest until they have become powerful. In short, there are as many different passions as there are people...

If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger-

If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early-

If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless-

If such things have not been apart of your existence, you probably won't understand Wizard Rock.

Hey T and Mom

My daughter reads everything .

She loves history,Egyptians,Mythology, ancient cultures,

Fairy tales..She likes it all ..And like Mom said she now has friends all over the place now.You cant beat that..thanks for your time everybody..Mike

My daughter also read the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" books, is reading the Harry Dresden books (The Dresden Files), and is finishing up "Wicked" right now. She seems to have settled into fantasy for the moment.

Alas, she also spends a lot of time on the infernal internet, but actually does a lot of reading there too.

What else do your children read? I'm asking because so many kids turn Harry into their sole reading experience.

My daughter is running one of the Wizard Rock websites--wizardrock.org. I cannot believe the benefits that have accrued to her by working on this site. Aside from the friendships she has created with people from around the world, she has learned a lot about acting like a grown-up (which is a little overrated), supervising staff, working very hard for something you believe in, and in the end, having an outlet for the social justice work she began as a member of Amnesty International.

Plus this whole ride has been a lot of fun for her, and for me. When I was her age, I couldn't even dream about the work that she is doing, the contacts, and the opportunity to be a part of something that is much larger than her immediate community. I admit it, I am jealous of her ability to make a much bigger difference in the world.

As Mike says, the kids doing this (and they're not all teenagers), are gaining so much from it--and don't we all wish we had work that we could be passionate about every single day?