My young students are having a magical time thinking about wizards and dragons this month. Most of them are just learning to read, so they are aware of Harry Potter through commercials and perhaps the movies, but not the printed word. I admit I enjoyed the first three Harry Potter books, but then it became too onerous a task to keep up with the series.
My brother, and later my oldest son, were Tolkien junkies, reading the whole Lord of the Rings cycle around and around for years. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis left me cold. I read Little Women every year during Christmas break, books about archaeology, and my favorite Laura Ingalls Wilder books many times. Given a good dugout roof over my head, a blizzard or two, and a plague of grasshoppers, I was a happy young reader.
So I was interested to overhear the kindergarten kids talking about the wizard headmaster, Double Door. Not the wise, powerful, and possibly deceased Dumbledore of Hogwarts Academy--I think Double Door presides over the Hogwash Academy of Wizardry housed in the aluminum double-wides down at Uncle Cam's Trailer Lot. Before he became headmaster, Double Door was the professor of bug zapping, and K-Mart blue light spells. When Hogwash Academy has a Sorting Hat ceremony, the hat still has a price tag hanging on it.
Bring on the grasshoppers.
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