Being Thankful: Day Eighteen

My thankful post today is going to be a little silly, but I don't care. Because in all actuality, I am thankful for Harry Potter. I know it sounds a little dumb, but I've been thinking about it all day because I'm going to the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 tonight. I'm so excited. I've never been a really huge fan of the movies, but I have definitely enjoyed the last few, and Deathly Hallows looks like the best of the bunch so far.

I really am thankful for the books, though. It isn't every day that you come across a series of books that you can literally grow up with. Plus, the themes and messages of the books are legitimately good: love, friendship, loyalty, courage. The idea that if you just do what it is you know you have to do, everything will turn out in the end. There are even some gospel themes in the book, such as the veil in Order of the Phoenix, and when Luna tells Harry that the loved ones they have lost are just on the other side, just waiting to see them again.

Plus, how can you not be glad for a book that taught millions of children how fun it is to read? And thanks to the success of the Harry Potter series, the YA genre has been catapulted into mainstream, yielding some rather amazing new authors, such as Maggie Stiefvater and Suzanne Collins (no, I will not include Stephenie Meyer—she doesn't come even close to amazing).

While I will always love the Harry Potter books much more than the movies, I'm super thankful that I get to go hang out with friends and see all the crazy costumes people will come up with tonight. It's going to be awesome.