Fictionary or Dictionary?

[WARNING: Possible spoilers below for the three or four people on the planet who are capable of reading and have not yet read the Harry Potter books]

Mikaela and I started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at bedtime a couple of weeks ago. We read one chapter a night. The first few nights were challenging. She WANTED to like it, but she was not so fond of those first few chapters. And it was difficult to predict what she wouldn’t like. She was OK with Voldemort and Harry’s parents being killed. The snake escaping in the zoo didn’t scare her. But the Dursleys being mean to Harry and Dudley punching Harry really upset her.

Then we hit Chapter Six, in which Harry, Ron & Hermione sneak out of their dorm to meet Malfoy in the Trophy Room for a midnight wizard’s duel. The Poltergeist Peeves didn’t scare her. The discussion of possibly getting killed in a wizard’s duel didn’t scare her. A huge, vicious, three-headed dog didn’t bother her. But she got so upset that Harry, Ron & Hermione were breaking the rules by sneaking out that we almost had to stop reading.

We took the next night off from reading, to let the situation calm down a bit. Then, the other night, we had a big breakthrough before we started reading the chapter about quidditch. I always begin by asking Mikaela if she has any questions before we start reading. She said, “I just have one question. Is Harry Potter fictionary or dictionary?” Of course I figured out what she meant. I explained to her that the stories were fiction – they were made up. (And that the opposite of fiction is non-fiction. A dictionary is a special kind of book where you can see how words are spelled and pronounced and what they mean).

Once she knew Harry Potter was a made-up story, Mikaela just needed a very broad plot synopsis (to know that Harry and Hermione and Ron were OK at the end of the book) and she was comfortable with continuing. Since then, we’ve been able to continue reading without incident. Mikaela is excited for her reading time each night (and doesn’t even complain – much – about the TV time she misses for reading). Earlier tonight, we let her in on the “secret” that there are movies to go with the Harry Potter books. She’s very excited now to finish Sorcerer’s Stone, because we told her that she can watch the movie the first campout after we finish reading the book.