Picket Fence Post

The three Picket Fence Post kids and I got to stay out late on a school night in order to see a preview last night of Harry Potter: The Exhibition at the Boston Museum of Science, courtesy of a Parents & Kids press pass.

The exhibit — which runs in Boston from Oct. 25 through February 21 — is a large collection of items (wardrobes, props, set pieces, etc.) from the Harry Potter films. Items included Harry’s wand and glasses, clothing (Daniel Radcliffe was soooo small when he was in the first film! Smaller than my 8-year-old.), his red velvet curtained bed from Hogwarts, his Quidditch gear, his Nimbus 2000 and the Marauder’s Map. There was Hermoine Granger’s gown from the Yule Ball and her Time-Turner. Hagrid’s hut, Buckbeak, the Fat Lady guarding the “picture frame door” to the Gryffinder area, Snape’s outfit and potions containers, Dolores Umbridge’s pink nightmare of an office (complete with kitty plates, the bloody quill and her fuzzy pink ensemble), Tom Riddle’s diary, Dobby and Fawkes were all there as well.

My kids — ages 11, 11 and 8 — loved walking through the mostly hands-off exhibit, though there was a chance for them to pull on some screaming Mandrakes in the Herbology section and toss the odd-shaped leather Quaffles through three Quidditch rings. They also liked the audio tour option; we were given handsets and could enter numbers which correlated with the items on display. That way we could hear Mrs. Weasley’s “howler” letter that she sent Ron as we saw it in his trunk.

However if you’re thinking about bringing very young kids, you might want to consider this: After you walk into the exhibit and are greeted by a robed Hogwarts “teacher” who picks a kid or two from the audience upon which to bestow the sorting hat (The Girl was picked and sorted into Gryffindor), you’re ushered into a darkened room with eight screens which show scenes from the movies. At first you see Harry as he grows up in the films, followed by his buddies and other Hogwarts scenes. Then, accompanied by loud, menacing music and sound, you see sinister images of Voldemort & Co., which caused my 8-year-old to bury his head into my side. I used my notebook to shield him and help cover his ears. A younger boy in our group, about 5, was so terrified by it, that he kept shrieking, “I’m scared! I want to get out of here!”

Other scary aspects of the exhibit included: The Forbidden Forest section, which had the giant spider Aragog, as well as the Dark Arts section which had Lord Voldemort’s billowing costume and two, life-sized Death Eater costumes, complete with skull-like masks. The masks were the scariest things in the whole exhibit, if you ask me, but I’m not 5 and standing from a vantage point of several feet lower than an adult. However these sections were easy to walk through briskly if there was a concern. My 8-year-old didn’t go over to the Voldemort/Death Eater section and avoided looking at the eerie Kreacher.

The exhibit concluded with the crowd being emptied out into the Harry Potter gift shop. And you’d best be prepared to empty your wallet. I think the coolest things we saw in the gift shop were the different wands, the Marauder’s Map and the wizard chess set.

Image credit: Chris Hollo/Museum of Science.

It took some convincing on my older kids’ part to get me to read the entire Harry Potter series. They’d become so enthralled by everything about the world of Potter that I felt as though I’d be missing out on a huge opportunity to bond with them if I didn’t slog through the thousands of pages of J.K. Rowling’s fanciful tale about a humble boy wizard. Surprisingly, I discovered that I adored the books and was very moved by the time I came to the conclusion of the seventh installment. I didn’t want it to end.

Then I read the news this week that injected joy in my heart: Universal Orlando Resort is opening a Harry Potter theme park next spring called, the “Wizarding World of Harry Potter.” 

I am so there, or at least I want to be. This is a rare thing, mind you, as I’m not much of a fan of theme parks. When the entire Picket Fence Post family went to Disney World for a week in January with a set of Picket Fence Post grandparents, it was indeed great fun and I loved making those memories with the kids, but I’m not much of a ride person. But at a Potter theme park, I think I’d have big expectations for my own personal enjoyment of it.

The Universal press release gushed, “Guests will be able to sip Butterbeer, buy Extendable Ears at Zonkos and experience a state-of-the-art attraction that brings the stories of Harry Potter to life in a way never before imagined.”

Not that they’re raising hopes and expectations. Much. Visitors will see Hogsmeade, the Hogwarts Castle, Honeydukes, Hogs Head, Ollivander and even have a ride on a Hippogriff. A video has images of what the “Wizarding World” will look like. The whole idea of it makes me feel like a kid as I try to imagine what it would’ve been like to have one of my favorite childhood fictional worlds – something like Star Wars – be recreated in front of me. (I should note that my favorite part of Disney was the Hollywood Studios portion where we logged some quality time in the Star Wars corner of the park.)

I just love the fact that the Harry Potter phenomenon was initially sparked by good, old fashioned books and that children, young children, are gobbling up the dead tree books and re-reading them compulsively. (I cannot count how many times my twin 11-year-olds have voraciously consumed those books, a couple of which are already falling apart.) Anything that promotes reading and a love of literature, because that’s how I see this, is a wonderful thing.

Below is a video of the map of what will be included in Wizarding World. Is it too early to book a trip . . .

Image credit: Universal Orlando Resort via the LA Times.

Item #1: Meet Max

After nearly seven hours of driving to a dog shelter in New York State and back, the Picket Fence Post family now has a new member: A three-month-old wheaten terrier/Havanese puppy whom we named Max. (At least we think he’s a wheaten terrier/Havanese. That’s what we were told by the shelter folks, though his paperwork mentioned something about a Skye terrier. . . )

Max didn’t sleep well in his crate last night, even though I quasi-slept on the sofa near him. The scared little thing whined intermittently, reminding me of a baby awakening and crying during the night. After dusting off our baby gates and using caffeine this morning like a controlled substance, I feel as though I’m returning to my “new mom” days. A column on our search for Max is in the works.

Item #2: Papi Letdown

I was out on the road all day yesterday with the Picket Fence Post family getting Max, so I didn’t catch up on the heart-rending news regarding Big Papi until late yesterday and then read full coverage in the newspapers this morning. (Reading newspapers, on dead trees, how old school.) Hearing that David Ortiz in 2003 tested positive for performance enhancing drugs felt like someone had taken away Christmas, especially because of how it endangers the perspective on the special, glittering gem of a 2004 season. It’s a gut-level disappointment for someone like myself who hopes and wishes that seemingly good, decent guys like Ortiz wouldn’t and don’t mess around with such things. This, according to the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan, makes me “terminally naive.” However I think it’s one thing for a show-off of a guy like Manny to test positive, quite another for the quiet, affable Papi.

Item #3: Pot-Dealing Mom on ‘Weeds’

Over on Mommy Track’d, I wrote about my recent Weeds-a-thon, where I OD’d (pardon the pun) on the Showtime comedy/drama about the widowed, pot-dealing soccer mom who used to peddle her wares to fellow suburbanites in order to provide for her kids. However after watching the Nancy Botwin character evolve over several seasons — in a recent episode she gave birth to the baby of a Mexican drug lord — I wasn’t thrilled by the transformation. Despite all this, the show continues to be riveting.

Item #4: Potter is the New Skywalker

In my latest GateHouse News Service column, I make the argument that, for kids today, the Harry Potter series is to them what the Star Wars series was to us in the days when Star Wars was merely a trilogy and not a six-pack. I also think that, as heroes go, Potter is better than Skywalker, writing, “. . . [U]nlike Luke Skywalker, who had the tendency to whine and be gratingly self-absorbed, Potter suffers and doesn’t whine, which sets my kids’ favorite childhood character several notches above the one I admired as a kid.”

Okay, so it was actually the actor, Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter in the films, who appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman to promote the new movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but some ‘rents might not know who Radcliffe is, hence me putting “Potter” in the headline.

My resident Potter fans liked the Radcliffe interview (watched it twice), particularly when he talked about not liking to clean up his apartment and when Letterman compared photos of him when he starred in the first Potter movie to now. As far as teen idols go, he’s cuter than Zac Effron or the JoBros.

In honor of the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, this week’s Friday Funnies is Potter-centric. My resident Potter maniacs find these two Harry Potter Puppet Pals videos hysterical.

This one is insidiously catchy and will worm its way into your brain if you’re not careful:

This one mocks Harry Potter’s “cool” status as “The Chosen One:”

Item #1: Harry Potter

I took my resident, twin 10-year-old Harry Potter addicts to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday and was unpleasantly surprised by the trailers that were run prior to the showing of PG movie being played in the middle of a weekday. They were extremely violent, more so than the magical, wizarding violence in the Potter series.

One film, spearheaded by John Cusack as the dad of two kids, was about the end of the world. We saw streets and major landmarks being swallowed up, a fake newscast about mass suicide, children being put in danger. There was a preview for a vampire movie for which I don’t think my kids are mature enough to see. Then there was the Sherlock Holmes trailer which I likewise have no plans to let them watch when its released in the winter. These were previews geared toward a teenaged audience, not the mostly a tweenaged one obsessed with a boy wizard and catching a 1:10 p.m. flick.

Some may ask whether it’s hypocritical to complain about scary, violent movie trailers when I was bringing my kids to a scary Harry Potter movie with one seriously creepy scene. Here’s my response: My kids have read all the Potter books a bazillion times and have seen all the previous movies. They knew what was coming and when to avert their eyes. (I pointedly did NOT take my nearly 8-year-old to see the movie because I thought it would be intense.) As for the trailers that aired before Half-Blood Prince, I thought they were distinctly age-inappropriate. I looked around the theater and noticed many kids my children’s age who looked terrified.

Here’s one that was aired for the apocalyptic film 2012:

As for Half-Blood Prince, while The Girl and The Eldest Boy did like it and said they want to see it many times over again – albeit once it comes out on DVD and we can fast-forward through scary parts if they so desire — they were disheartened by the several changes made in the movie that didn’t jive with the book, particularly in a pivotal scene. When I read aloud Entertainment Weekly’s Whitney Pastorek’s “Harry Potter geeks: Vent your frustrations about the movie changes here” blog item, the two kids roared with approval. While I was unhappy with some of the changes, I WAS, overall, highly entertained.

Item #2: Three-Hankie Entertainment

Continuing with the cinematic theme . . . I enjoyed Michelle Slatalla’s column in the New York Times about her daughters’ obsession with books and films that make them cry with their dreadfully melancholy premises, and who dragged her to see My Sister’s Keeper, a tragic, sick kid movie which makes me grab for the Kleenex just at the mere thought of its premise.

Slatalla wrote:

“. . . [I]nstead of ‘All-of-a-Kind Family’ or ‘Betsy-Tacy,’ in which the biggest excitement was the simple act of growing up, my children always preferred tear-jerkers featuring girls with fatal diseases, in which protagonists were forever going into and out of remission and meeting similarly doomed boys at summer camps for the terminally ill.”

Item #3: The Scourge of Naked Kids

Some parents are comfortable allowing their very young children to run around in the buff. Some aren’t. This is news? The New York Times ran a huge story in its Home section yesterday entitled, “When Do They Need a Fig Leaf: Children Like to Strip Down But Not Everyone Approves,” and quoted those in favor of naked kids and those opposed, including parents of young children who are offended when their 3-year-olds are in the presence of naked friends:

“For many parents, allowing a child to run around naked at home is perfectly natural, an expression of the physical freedom that represents the essence of childhood, especially in the summer. But for others, unclad bodies are an affront to civility, a source of discomfort and a potentially dangerous attraction for pedophiles. These clashing sensibilities can create conflict, even when the nudity in question takes place at home.”

Some questions for you, my intrepid readers:

1) Have you taken your kids to movies and been unhappy with the content of the film trailers?

2) When you were young, did you like to read books or see movies that made you cry, or is this a new teenaged girl phenomenon?

3) Do you think that seeing naked little kids frolicking in their own homes is a scourge?

Image credit: Warner Brothers via GateHouse News Service.

Here are excerpts of the Q&A’s I did with the three kids when I was planning the family Christmas/Hanukkah card. The idea was to cut-and-paste these excerpts alongside copies of drawings the kiddos made, but, after I created the document on my laptop, The Spouse looked at it and declared it kind of blah. (For the original story on our Redacted Christmas cards, go here.)

The Eldest Boy, 10

Question: What’s the most annoying thing a sibling did this year?

Answer: That’s a good one. Hmm. I want to think of a good one. My brother and sister using my video game chair without my permission all the time, even when they’re not playing video games, I tell them, “Get your own chair if you like mine so much.”

Q: Who’s your favorite Red Sox player?

A: Mike Lowell, ever since he got the MVP award, I always started liking him.

Q: What ’s the single best movie or TV show you saw this year?

A: Harry Potter IV, The Goblet of Fire because you wouldn’t let us watch it for two years.

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Years after readers of the world excitedly gobbled up the thousands of pages in the seven-book Harry Potter series, I have finally reached that milestone myself.

My twin fourth graders have been obsessed with Harry Potter since 2006, when they plowed through the books during the summer. To date, they’ve read each of the books an untold number of times and their enthusiasm for the subject matter has not waned. Their birthdays were both Harry Potter-themed this year. (I was rather proud of the Sorting Hat I made from paper bags.) The Girl was a character from the series for two Halloweens in a row. (She was Hermione Granger last year, Ginny Weasley this year.) The Eldest Boy was an unnerving Potter doppelganger last year.

Knowing that their mother is an avid reader, they hounded me for quite some time, trying to persuaded me to read the series. This past spring I acquiesced, put aside all my other reading for pleasure and commenced my Potter odyssey. Last week, I finished the gloomy melancholy that is book seven. (Now I get why, at first, The Girl had to put down Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows multiple times in order to “take a break.”) I was shocked by how dark books 5-7 were and was moved to tears more than once. Whenever Harry saw his deceased parents, for example, I teared up.

And, as promised, I’m now making plans to take The Eldest Boy and The Girl out to a nice lunch where we’ll have a Harry Potter book club meeting and discuss all seven volumes. (I decided not to discuss each individual book with them because they, knowing what eventually happens, couldn’t stop themselves from revealing spoilers.) However I’m going to have to go back and refresh my memory about each book as it seems as though a lifetime has passed since I read those first few innocent books.

For those Harry Potter fans out there: What was your favorite book in the series? (Mine is book five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.) Were you surprised by how dark the series became in its later years?

Image credit: Scholastic.

Item #1: Are Football Parents Nuts?

The Eldest Son plays football, so I suppose, by definition, The Spouse and I would be considered football parents. And, from what I’ve been able to discern, the parents watching their sons play Pop Warner football are no more or less engaged — shouting everything from encouragement and cheers, to criticism and frustration at the refs — than are the soccer parents on the sidelines of The Girl’s soccer matches, or the baseball parents on the sidelines of The Eldest Son and The Youngest Son’s epic baseball games.

But a recent column in the Boston Globe makes football parents out to be a little bit more, oh, what’s the word, crazy, than your average, garden variety sports parent. While writer Chris Bohjalian did say that “parents scream at umpires and referees” at more than just football matches, he penned these observations after watching a middle school football game:

“All of a sudden, an attractive woman sitting near me in capri pants and a fashionable hoodie stands up and bellows, ‘Gut check, boys, gut check! Now’s when you have to stick it to ‘em!’ She is, apparently, a mother of one of the young warriors.

. . . Other parents were screaming at their children to ‘hit ‘em’ or ’stand tall’ or ’show ‘em what you’re made of.’ One grandfatherly looking gentleman in a windbreaker barked, ‘Take it to ‘em boys, take it to ‘em! Pop ‘em! Pop ‘em hard!’”

Wondering what it was about youth football that made parents go berserk, he wrote that the sport “appeals to our usually dormant atavistic core” and that he “left the field that Saturday morning feeling a little bit bloodied.”

And maybe, in some respects, he’s got a point. I know that whenever my kids are physically hit or knocked around while playing sports – whether it’s on the football field or during a soccer match — the mama bear inside me wants to rise up and protect my cubs. But I can’t. My only hope is that the refs and coaches watch out for all the children’s safety and that my kids hold their own against the wretched children who would dare to jostle my kin. Although if I were sitting near the woman Bohjalian described in his column, I likely would’ve rolled my eyes.

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