Dear Back-to-School Shoppers: Don’t Compare Yourselves to Harry Potter

Dear Back-to-School Shoppers,

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! It’s that time where all children get to buy their No. 2 pencils, 5 subject notebooks, box of Kleenex and pack of 418374095710 glue sticks for the new school year! And while these supplies are “super exciting” and all, we can’t help but wonder how much better the school year would be if our Muggle schools had school supplies lists like those at Hogwarts.

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Hagrid takes Harry shopping for school supplies in Diagon Alley (which, by the way, happens to be much more exciting than Staples or Walmart) for his first year of school at Hogwarts. And, try hard as we may to keep our jealousy at bay, we cannot help but feel a little envious when we compare Harry’s school list to our own:

To top things off, after Harry’s shopping experience at Ollivanders and Eeylops Owl Emporium, Hagrid then takes him to Florean Fortescue’s Ice-Cream Parlor! As if that weren’t just the ice cream on the cake!

And so, we would now like to offer you a bit of advice as you finish up school shopping and enter into your new school year, and that is this: do your very best not to compare yourself to Harry Potter. You would do much better to compare yourself to Matilda, Anne of Green Gables, Nicholas Nickleby, or even Tom Sawyer. We think you will find that these fictional students have much more in common with you than Mr. Potter when it comes to school supplies and overall school experiences. There is still much excitement to be found in a new uniform, new pens and pencils, and new notebooks, just so long as we are not playing “keeping up with the Potters.” Thank you, and we hope that we have helped curb any unrealistic expectations, resentfulness, or covetousness.

Sincerely,

-The Evergreen Team

P.S. If you're a Harry Potter fanatic like us, you should check out our GREENLIGHTReviews movie podcasts! Our hosts, Ann and Les, absolutely love the Harry Potter movies, especially the last one: