The Not-So-Family-Friendly Side of Pottermania

Twenty-five bucks! Fuck that shit!
--Asylum Street Spankers, “Smells like Thirty Something”

Okay, the new Harry Potter book isn't quite twenty-five bucks in most locations. (In fact, some are selling it for thirty-five bucks. Though if you buy a copy there really soon, you might be able to get it at a forty percent discount. Which isn't much cheaper than twenty-five bucks but, hey, every little bit counts.)

And yes, that Asylum Street Spankers song wasn't written about Harry Potter books.

And yet one can't help but wonder how many poor kids are going to be buying this new book anyway?

Yeah, I know. Those poor kids read too many books anyway. And are there no libraries or Goodwill stores to provide these kids with free or cheap copies long after every other rich kid in the universe has done their best to make them feel like shit for not reading the latest installment?

I don't hate the Harry Potter series. I'll be the first to admit that J. K. Rowling is one heck of a storyteller and that she has done a good job of writing something that people in my age-group -- I'm in my mid-forties -- can enjoy as much as the average grade school student.

But I'm not worried about people like me.

I'm worried about people far younger and poorer than me.

Yes, I realize access to cheap books isn't the worst problem poor kids in America are facing right now. But it does seem kinda funny to see people charging boodles of money to have rich people read about a poor kid like Harry Potter while at the same time ensuring that any real-life Harry Potter not be able to afford said book. In other words, the latest book is more likely to be read by a rich kid like Draco Malroy (one of the villains of the series) than a poor kid like Harry Potter.

Heh. Irony.