We all know that there is really only one reason we have kids. I mean, yeah, there’s the whole “walking bag of donateable organs and blood” part. But the real reason one has children, the true reason, is so that you can fill up their bizarre little brains with your own pet affections, vigilantly programming them to love the things you love, and also to love you, I guess. It’s like having a parrot, but instead of teaching them to say the things you want, it’s to have the emotional bonds to the pop culture that you want.
Friends, I am going to straight up say this right here—I have miserably failed in my efforts to indoctrinate my children with the appropriate pop culture references. Well, I say that I have failed, but I feel like at least 70% of the burden of failure rests on my two very bad garbage sons, who have both proven to be just dogshit at liking the right things.
At least I’ll always have access to their organs.
Here I will recount some of the ways that my efforts have not succeeded, so that all the parents out there who are making tiny copies of themselves in the hope of forcing their genre loves on their children can learn from my mistakes.
To begin with, I had assumed that the Large Son would take to genre like a duck to water.
The main reason for this is that genre is everywhere now. It’s about as common and unremarkable as paving asphalt. Whereas in the ’80s you were considered a big ole nerd for buying a Han Solo poseable action figure, in the bright, beautiful era of the 21st century, you can buy a bag of Star Wars-themed oranges and nobody even blinks an eye.
This is way different than when I grew up, when we kept renting a wobbly VHS of A New Hope from the library, and then my dad brought home The Empire Strikes Back and suddenly we realized that they had made more of these movies, oh my God.
So the Large Son is absolutely drowning in genre exposure. He lives in an age of abundance that I was utterly denied. But does he take advantage of it? Does he religiously memorize all of the various planets, as well as the types of ships?
No. He does not. For a whole damned year he called Darth Vader “Star Vader,” and he still calls Boba Fett “Bobo Fett,” and he calls every kind of land transport an “AT-AT,” which is just abysmally fucking wrong in every kind of way. I created a spreadsheet for him but I am fairly sure he only gave it a cursory glance. Perhaps the most galling thing about it all is that, incredibly, despite having never actually watched a Star Wars movie in the six years of his life (he says they are “too loud,” which, okay, sure), he somehow already knows that Vader is Luke’s father, and he’s just utterly fucking blasé about it, too.
No, wait, that’s not true. The worst thing is that his Star Wars is all prequels, which I see now were completely engineered for children, where Jedis just casually whomp battle droids and the battle droids make humorous, honking sounds as they die, and absolutely nothing matters. This, too, is Doing Star Wars Wrong. Like, even though the Ewoks were ridiculous, I still remembered when one of them attempted to wake up the mangled corpse of its friend, and then moaned in despair as he (she? Am I not Ewok woke?) realized his friend was dead.
Even when shit got saccharine, there were still some goddamn stakes. Teddy bears got their brains blown out. It was hardcore. The way they’re doing Star Wars today is just all wrong.
One of the places I can find common ground with Large Son, though, is in the Star Wars Lego Wii game where he plays as Artoo and just makes him fall off cliffs over and over again, laughing as Artoo makes that chirrupy scream as he dies.
That’s good. That’s pretty good.
VERDICT: BAD
While this was going on, I tried to teach Smaller, Louder Son about the Biblical parables hidden within Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Son. He responded by somehow ejecting feces out of every seam of his diaper except those around his buttocks, as if his lower torso were covered in hidden anuses.
VERDICT: VERY BAD
It seems as if Legos have somehow become the conduit for all things pop culture in our lives, and inevitably Large Son was gifted with some Lego Batman sets. These I approached with great interest. I remembered watching Batman: The Animated Series as a six-year-old, and wondering how I could possibly jimmy together a grappling hook in our shed, unaware that such a feat might be far easier for a genius, athletic, scientifically gifted billionaire than a STEM-challenged six-year-old in the South Carolina sticks.
Yet this, also, turned out to be a failure, because Large Son insisted on making Batman fight Steve from Minecraft. This is not canon. Worse, Large Son insisted that Batman would lose the fight because Batman was not—and here I quote directly—“immune to lava,” namely because Batman was incapable of carrying cobblestone.
First of all—again—this is not canon. Second of all, just because my son has not witnessed Batman carrying or utilizing cobblestone in the Minecraft universe, the idea that he is inherently incapable of doing so is preposterous bullshit. If Batman wanted to carry cobblestone, he would devote weeks of his time learning the best and most established methods of carrying cobblestone, and he’d map out dozens of plans and scenarios for carrying the cobblestone, carefully researching the mineral composition of the cobblestone, and he’d develop backup plans for the backup plans not only for carrying the cobblestone, but also implementing the cobblestone, delivering the cobblestone with surgical precision.
However, before I could finish making this argument, my son simply left.
VERDICT: WORST
After this, I approached Smaller, Louder Son and tried to strike up a conversation about how Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman: Dark Victory, and also the Hush storyline were all basically driven by the same narrative gimmick—murder mystery whodunit that lazily cycles through all available characters just to pad time—and also, man, isn’t that also basically the plot of the show Heroes, another work Jeph Loeb masterminded? However, instead of engaging with the argument, Smaller, Louder Son proceeded to yell incredibly loud, which made Wife come, and then she also yelled just incredibly loud, holy shit.
VERDICT: HOLY SHIT
I was pretty much at the end of my rope after this. As a white, middle class, male American nerd, I am only capable of expressing my anemic inner self through vapid genre references. Pop culture is my sole language of emotion! If my child does not appropriately love the intellectual properties I am attached to, will I be capable of loving either child? Especially Smaller, Louder Son, who smells like death yogurt??
Buy the Book
Foundryside: A Novel (The Founders Trilogy)
But then, I realized I was perhaps going too fast. Perhaps it’s like my music teacher always said about practicing pieces slowly, and then speeding up: it’s like putting a frog in a pot, and if you slowly increase the heat, the frog won’t jump out, and the water will boil, and you’ll successfully kill the frog. (On an unrelated note: this is the worst metaphor of all time.)
So, one day while playing Legos with Large Son, I had an idea—what if we grouped the Lego dudes into two teams, with two bases, and we took turns: each turn we’d get to move one Lego person, and attack once. Each Lego person got two hit points. Whoever ran out of Lego guys first won.
He agreed. And we played a good game—and, though he was unaware that I was basically training him for countless board games, he enjoyed himself a lot.
Part of the reason he enjoyed himself, I’m sure, is that his guys outnumbered my guys three to one, and also they got all the guns, and my guys were armed with one (1) stick, and one (1) fish. This doesn’t necessarily indicate that he might not eventually love nerdy stuff. It might indicate that he’s an asshole, though.
VERDICT: POSSIBLY?
Encouraged by this, afterwards I went to Smaller, Louder Son and talked to him about how interesting it was that Emily Blunt somehow managed to star in not one but two of the most innovative sci-fi movies of the recent era, Looper (2012), and Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and also she played somewhat similar characters—a tough, independent love interest who reforms the wayward main character—and I was expanding on what’s interesting about this curious cultural symmetry when I noticed he had fallen asleep.
VERDICT: HOPELESS
This article was originally published in May 2017.
Robert Jackson Bennett was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but grew up in Katy, Texas. He attended the University of Texas at Austin and, like a lot of its alumni, was unable to leave the charms of the city. He resides there currently with his wife and children. He is the author of the Divine Cities series, and hs novel Foundryside is the start of a new trilogy, forthcoming this August from Crown Publishing.
“I created a spreadsheet for him but I am fairly sure he only gave it a cursory glance. “
Ah…any chance of getting a look at this spreadsheet?
it’s only Star Wars, not Doctor Who.
What’s the big deal?
Agree with @2, please share this spreadsheet. As I type, I have a spreadsheet open on screen 2 to create test/impact scenarios of an upcoming security compliance project in Q1 for work; and on my phone is a spreadsheet of attack patterns for my guild in a campaign on Hoth in star wars galaxy of heroes. I need this spreadsheet of empire & rebel ships on screen 1 plz.
Seriously though, when my daughter was 2 she came with me and my wife to a drive in to see ep7 on opening weekend, and for some reason I thought Clone Wars was captivating enough animation to watch with her. I was wrong.
Now she’s 4 and we’re watching Rebels via netflix dvd rental and it holds her attention as long as I put it on during dinner time and her need to eat outweighs the need to demand we watch something disney (haha star wars is disney now bitch!) or something my little pony (Rarity is the best pony, hands down). My wife won’t let me take our daughter to ep8 cause she’s too old and comprehends too much. My arguments that Rey is a great role model do nothing. I am at a loss
As an aunt, I was able to indoctrinate my niece and nephew into geekdom with bedtime stories, book gifts, and an occasional movie. That worked so I once again surrounded my non-geek sister in all that weirdness. She could not escape. Evil laugh. Evil laugh. The much younger brother had already been indoctrinated by me so I didn’t have to give copies of LORD OF THE RINGS for Christmas, etc. to his kids. He had already done that. But I was the coolest aunt ever because I could discuss TV cartoons, Star Trek and Wars, Harry Potter, and the latest Percy Jackson novel.
For many years, I worked with a college group that ran a sf convention. I watched these kids meet their mates, have kids, and bring them to the con over the years. They have now started on a third generation which is awesome and scary. There is hope that this can happen with your kids.
I can relate, RJB, for I am a nerd with a young child who does not overlap in my nerddom, generally.
While Wife and I have successfully introduced Kid to Fraggle Rock, Kid has also successfully introduced MLP:FIM to Wife and I (though I’ll never admit it). Even though I saw Star Wars and Indiana Jones when I was her age (or younger), I don’t think she’d appreciate seeing a tauntaun sliced open by a lightsaber or watching Nazi faces melt. So, I’m holding off on those. We have a tentative schedule for introducing her to nerd things. I think the next thing is The Hobbit (the book, not that terrible Peter Jackson regurgitation; we’re not bad parents) and possibly Muppets. Star Wars and Sailor Moon will come some time later.
These things take time.
Yes, yes, you have. This is especially true since the only way to raise a true son is as an absentee father (exceptions made for ghosts) who has tragically been cut down in their prime. This will cause your sons to develop a much stronger basis of character than your current haphazard methods.
Really, look at all the great sons in the history of time. Luke Skywalker. Batman. Superman. The Lion King. Jesus. Optimus Prime. Their fathers? Gone.
At least get yourself thrown in prison for a crime you didn’t commit.
When my nephew was 4 or 5, he was at the pediatrician. The doctor, in an attempt to put him at ease, asked him what his favorite color was. My nephew said “Green, No Blue! AAAAAhhhhhhhhh.” True Story.
His brother, when he entered his pre-teen vandalism phase, wrote “Bad Wolf” in small print all over his room. His mother blamed me. She wasn’t wrong.
I am endeavoring to raise them right but now they are know-it-all teenagers so everything Aunt Kate likes is BORing. But they perked up quick enough when I arrived with tickets for The Last Jedi. I murmured “I still got it!” to my sister, who kindly did not point out that I probably do not.
“Whereas in the ’80s you were considered a big ole nerd for buying a Han Solo poseable action figure, in the bright, beautiful era of the 21st century, you can buy a bag of Star Wars-themed oranges and nobody even blinks an eye.”
I think the people in that article blinked a few eyes, just saying. :)
I have the dubious honour to be Godfather to two brilliant little nerds, and an uncle to two devilish nerds-to-be. The brilliant little nerds have the miss fortune that their father is absolutely obsessed with Wolverine (the comic book character, obviously, not that dire moving picture or the furry things) and have had no option, but to delve into the deep dark depths of geekdom to escape the subsequent trauma: a journey I have been more than happy to facilitate. The devilish nerds to be are, at the tender age of one year and one month and two days (yes, it’s more than a mite frustrating that I didn’t encounter this blog one day earlier!), already successfully indoctrinated into a variety of IP, thanks in no small part to my sister-in-law and an honorary uncle that are obsessed with pretty much anything remotely engeeked.
This foundation has proven fortunate as I work nights (and live a fairly long way from either), but also means that I am able to fulfill the role of ‘cool uncle’ to both pairs, and my broad-stroke nerdishness has proven to be a highly useful babysitting tool as well. For example, My Little Pony may not appear geeky at first glance, but when you realise that the best villain/not-villain in what is arguably the best of contemporarycartoonland (though Teen Titans is running a close second!) is actually a member of the Q Continuum… well… what an ‘in’.
Brilliant little nerd #1 postulated to me recently that Rainbow Dash would make an excellent starship captain (and indeed her special abilities to go really fast are extremely useful in Attack Wing). And of course, who can forget the story of how Princess Belle thwarted the combined might of Gaston and The Master with a very ingenious use of her broken Lightsaber and a Sonic Screwdriver, thus saving The Beast and The Doctor from an eternity of imprisonment within Gaston’s Time Crystal.
Turns out I don’t actually need to do any of the work!
@3 Rarity is definitely not the best pony. That title is clearly Rainbow Dash’s, or maybe Apple Jack’s.
Teddy bears got their brains blown out. It was hardcore.
More hardcore than you might at first think. Those are man-eating teddy bears. It’s made quite clear in the film; before C3PO does his “I am a god” act, they are getting set to eat the heroes after roasting them over an open fire.
Established. OK?
Now, spool forward to the closing moments. The festivities are going on in the background. Luke stands alone, mournful, watching the body of Darth Vader burning on a funeral pyre.
Or, possibly, watching his father’s corpse being baked en papillote so he can be eaten by a load of tiny cannibal gonks.
This is a dark, dark ending to the series.
My son was enraptured by the prequel trilogy. The original trilogy was just okay. What? What? He could barely name the original trilogy characters, but he could tell me what every colour of clone trooper armour indicated, the name of multiple captains and commanders I never heard mentioned in the movies – what now? Huh? His primary interest in the new trilogy was to see what new weapons and armour were assigned to the First Order troops. How does this … why do you …..?? Now he’s pursuing a career in security. When do I finally get to tell him he got it all wrong – after he’s successfully launched in his career?? When, when?!
@7 Bonneykate – your nephew at the pediatrician? Brilliant :D
Completely baffled that literally no one has nominated Twilight Sparkle as Best Pony. Or better yet, Luna.
@14 Twilight Sparkle is a plot device, she has little to no personality of her own except that she “struggles” with making friends yet seems to have many. Her assistant Spike, by contrast, has much more going for him and I always want to know more about his dragon culture. Princess Luna is a good choice, on the surface her motivations seem obvious – to simply be the flipside to Celestia; but then she has her own motivations plus turns into Nightmare Moon when provoked.
@10 All the core ponies are cool in their own way; Rainbow Dash and Apple Jack being the front runners due to easy to relate to and their stories are fleshed out a lot. But to me there’s something about Rarity’s shiek passion for fashion but still not a shallow stereotype I admire. It’s like she could be a snob but always comes through for others and wants to help. Plus she’s a magic user that can hold her own rather than being in the shadow of Twilight Princess
Actually, the best Pony of them all, is the one you haven’t named…the best pony of them all.
Respectfully disagree that Twilight has no personality. Maybe she’s morphed into a plot device, but the obsessive-compulsive, desperate for gold stars, good-hearted but hilariously wrongheaded Twilight from the first two seasons is absolutely a character.
With our kids, we’ve at least watched the first two Harry Potter movies (they’re not to the dark stuff yet, although a guy with a face on the back of his head, a basilisk, and an acromantula are still a bit scary), and I’ve had Star Trek on in the background (the kids mostly like to dance to the opening credits songs; hey, it’s a start). We’ve watched a bit of Transformers: RescueBots (actually a pretty decent, morality based show). They can identify a number of superheroes on sight, though we’ve not really watched any comic book movies with them as yet. However, we are not yet ready to introduce our kids to the glory of Star Wars (I should say, my wife isn’t ready, but I’ve been ready for a long time). They recognize some of the characters (R2-D2, BB-8, Stormtroopers, Yoda, Darth Vader – whom my son endearingly called Dark Vader for the longest time), and they certainly know what a lightsaber is, but I kid you not, aside from their personal health and safety, one of my biggest fears is that they’ll find out Darth Vader is Luke’s father without me there to witness it. I would be devastated.
berthulf @@@@@ 9 – chalk me up as another who immediately recognized the voice of John DeLancie in My Little Pony. I’ve also heard the melodious bass of George Takei on one or more of their Disney animated shows.
I got lucky with our now 7-year-old daughter, who has been into superheroes for many years now. As I said recently to my wife, “At least someone in the house appreciates my old, comic-book-reading knowledge.”
Back when she was maybe three or four, she was playing some free game that I’d downloaded onto her iPod Touch. For who knows what reason, it had a new mini-cartoon based on the old DC Super Friends show, and she would watch it over and over, always laughing when the Joker would say to (Batman probably; who knows, I didn’t watch it—that show was horrible), “Meet your old friend, Solomon Grundy.”
Seeing a new way to distract her when I needed to get things done around the house, I bought all the Super Friends DVDs, and she watched most if not all of them over many months.
She got so into superheroes that when we eventually watched “Big Hero Six,” at some point during the long introduction and background story of all the characters, she said, “When are they going to be superheroes like we saw in the previews?” Well, at any rate, she’s picked up my distaste for long, drawn-out origin stories—the paragraph-long blurb at the beginning of most 70s and 80s comic books is plenty of background, thanks! Are you listening DC and Marvel movie and TV show makers? My daughter and I *do not* need to see yet another Spider-Man origin story! (Just to be clear, she hasn’t actually seen any Spider-Man origins yet; I’m just projecting.)
Unfortunately, thanks to Marvel making the good live action movies, and DC the good cartoons, she has mostly been only into the DC universe, of which I am much less familiar than Marvel, except for Batman. Thankfully, she saw a friend playing Marvel Lego Superheroes, and asked for it. I bought her a PS4 copy for her birthday, and she has been obsessed with it over the last couple of months. Yay, my Marvel knowledge can now be put to good use!
I had three daughters and no sons so I figured I was doomed when it came time to pass on my nerdem. How wrong I was.
I remember when my youngest was 6 we were watching Starship Troopers and I thought it was just a little to graphically violent for her so I sent her upstairs to bed. In the scene when the Brain bug sucks the brain out of a guy I here a giggle and then “ollll cooollll” from above me and sure enough she was watching through the rails on the stairway.
Then before the prequel trilogy was released they re-released the original movies. At the time we had one remaining large cinmax theater in town that were running them and not wanting to see them alone, my wife was very anti anything Sci-Fi, I drug all three 5, 10, 15 along. To my surprise all three loved them. So over a 6 week period I indoctrinated them. :)
Fast forward to today and I have personally become very disillusioned with the series, but every time a new film is released, my grown up kids now drag me to the theater to see them. Be careful what you wish for LOL.
Do you talk like you write around your children?
Thank you, blessed Tor admins, for reposting this article. That hit me in all the right nerd/humor spots. Just what I needed on a Friday afternoon!
And I’m even more interested in Robert’s books now, which I’m sure was in no way connected to the reposting.
I LMAO the first time this was posted and it has been juuuust long enough to be fresh-ish and make me laugh all over again.
Sadly, my efforts to introduce my 7 year old daughter to comics through DC Super Hero Girls has been a miserable failure so far. She likes some of the stories with Wonder Woman but is mostly indifferent to all the other characters. Yet she can reel off the names of every single L.O.L. Surprise! doll in the three series and however many phases that they have release so far. Why!?!?! [shakes fist at sky]
Oh well, little does she know that there are many long boxes lying at grand-parents’ house, just waiting for the right time to pounce. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha…
@12 cecrow Ouch ouch ouch! I haven’t laughed water through my nose since I was a little kid and forgot how much it hurts. I will get you for this!
Don’t worry, my 7 year-old daughter’s favorite movie is Empire Strikes Back and Darth Vader is her favorite character. My 5 year-old’s favorite is Rey and likes Episode 7 best. So, we’re doing pretty good. Although, I myself, can’t claim more than just being a fan, not a true devotee to Star Wars. I like the movies, have read a few of the books, but I can’t claim to have a killer spread-sheet.
The important thing about kids is that you have to play the Long Con. When my youngest was much younger, I was getting into World of Warcraft and showed him fighting and raids. He made a character and then completely ignored it for YEARS. Scroll about a decade into the future and he’s a larger Azeroth nerd than me BY FAR.
These things take awhile. And given enough time, poop is no longer involved, so small louder offspring might have a shot :-)
How did I miss this last year?
Don’t try too hard with indoctrination. Settle for smaller rewards. One of my fond memories is a family drive where my daughter started singing along with- and not even the chorus- Rock and Roll All Nite. Her mother asked “What have you done to my child?”
However, if you watched Star Wars before Empire came out, you should not be calling it ANH or Ep 4 or anything gross like that.
This was hilarious, I had to send my wife the quote about the feces & anuses.
It’s interesting to look back, and at least when I was a kid (’80s) there was a lot dark stuff for kids – Dark Crystal? Amazing and also scary as hell.
And wow, I had never considered Darth Vader en papillote was the going to be the buffet at the big party.
I fell sideways into geekdom at a young age (through Choose your own Adventure books, moving into Fighting Fantasy, which was big at the time) and I liked Star Wars, and Star Trek reruns were on tv, and I watched Transformers and so on.
As I got older I realized that what I liked was story, in believable worlds.
So I got those Lego Heroica games so me and #1 son can play D&D lite together. And he loves stories too, and really took to a Maori myths and legends book we got him. So on a rare trip to Auckland, I insisted we make the long trip out to Waipoua forest (there was a messy delay for car sickness….) but we got there, and we got to see Tane Mahuta, which is either a very large 2000yr old tree, or the god of the forest who pushed apart the Sky Father and the Earth Mother and made the world as it is. He’s in that age range where he can still believe in the fantastical, so it was important to me to take him to that place. When we read that story now, he recognizes the name in the book as a real being that he has seen, who is also a tree/lives inside a tree.
Subsequent trip to Auckland was merely an excuse for a trip south to Matamata, so I could go to Hobbiton for my birthday, but in the year preceeding I had (against my wifes wishes, but what does she know?) been reading The Hobbit to him on and off. Getting to see Bilbo’s house was the most exciting thing ever for him, and now Middle Earth is a real place and you can go to it and we’ve got a leaf from the tree growing at the top of the Hill and I am a Proud Dad.
One day we will get to watch the movies together, but by then he will be too old and the magic of the place will be for different reasons. I’m glad he got the experience he did. Now he also loves Transformers and Star Wars and Lego and I am pretty sure my work here is done.
I’m not sure if I will be allowed to do the same to the twin girls. I hope so. They deserve to believe in magic too.
Some thoughts:
– This article takes on new meaning when you juxtapose it with the recent article on daddy issues in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Has the writer been traumatized by the daddy issues so common in geek culture, and is he in turn, passing that trauma on?
– I am an SF fan, the son of an SF fan, and my son is an SF fan who married a SF fan, and their daughter is a SF fan. The geek is strong in this family.
– My granddaughter likes Rarity, but I am on Team Pinky Pie myself.
It’s fun to revisit this again :) My 7 year old is still pretty geeky – and as it turns out he loves music so he’s about as in to John Williams and soundtracks as I am, and will want to sit through the credits for a movie with a good score to listen to the soundtrack :) What I find encouraging is that he has both boy and girl heroes to choose from, and his favorites include Ashoka, Rey, Wonder Woman and Supergirl. Recently he rented a DC cartoon that I’m reasonably sure was intended to be marketed for girls – some kind of DC Superhero Girls cartoon about a fake boarding school (Amanda Waller is the principal, lol) with mostly girl superheroes/villains and students, but a few token boy characters (which I found rather funny). He thinks it’s great. Although the show certainly takes some liberties with the characterizations ;)
He’s starting to get into more mainstream superheroes – we took him to see Avengers but the movie itself only held his interest for about a half hour. He loves watching videos/cartoons/games about all the heroes and knows who they all are though. He seems to enjoy watching the Supergirl/Flash TV shows as well And we’re still plugging our way through the Harry Potter books, and as we’re going to New Zealand this winter, I’m hoping to refresh his LOTR geekery a bit. We’ve read the Hobbit and he’s seen some of the movie, but perhaps he’s ready for at least the LotR movie….
He’s getting into LEGOs now and has accumulated many sets from Minecraft, Batman and we’ve gifted him our old Star Wars and Indiana Jones sets…it’s fun to see what he creates :)
As for my younger son, he does love super heroes and what not but he seems to be more into video games. We don’t even have that many, but he loves watching videos of people playing games.
My older son enjoyed Solo and thought it was very funny. A few weeks ago my husband overheard him trying to ‘explain’ Star Wars to his younger brother. “All the movies are good…except for the one where Han Solo’s son kills him. I HATE that one.”. LOL.
So since I first posted on this article in December, we’ve progressed in Harry Potter to Goblet of Fire (we fast forward through the graveyard scene, because that freaks me the heck out, let alone the 4 and 6 year olds). We’ve also been reading through the books, and are about a third of the way through Prisoner of Azkaban (the Fat Lady just fled). Our kids are so into Harry Potter right now that, for a planned 1-week trip to Orlando next summer, they are far, far more excited for the one day we’ll be in the Harry Potter portions of Universal Studios than they are in the five days we’ll be at Disney World.
We’ve also finally started Star Wars. So far, it’s only A New Hope; the kids ask millions of questions during the movie (Why did Obi Wan sacrifice himself? Is Luke’s daddy really dead? Did Darth Vader really kill kim?), so it’ll be another watch or two through that before we’re ready for Empire. They’re kids, so inquisitiveness is part of the package, but it’s hard to dance around their questions when I so desperately don’t want to spoil key plot points of future movies (a big issue with Harry Potter, as well – Does Harry die? Well, yes, but he gets better.)