User blog comment:JoePlay/Wizarding World Giveaway/@comment-4182711-20110721173900

When I entered elementary school I could barely read. In first grade, I had a reading score lower than a kindergarten student. Even with this, every day after school I would grab a stool to reach the top level of our book shelf to grab all of the Harry Potter books that we owned. I would pretend I was reading but in reality I could only look at the pictures, barely comprehending the first paragraph even after reading through it hundreds of times. Around this time, teachers started to notice my problems with reading and I was put into a special "Hot & Cold" reading system, this around the same time I was put in speech therapy. As the months progressed in these classes I started to notice that I started to understand those first paragraphs. I remembered the Mr. and Mrs. Dursley were quite normal, thank you very much and that Mrs. Dursley would die if her sister and her husband showed up on their door step. As I began to understand these words it wasn't just the magic of Harry Potter that was affecting me but the magic of being able to read. After a year of reading help I was at the top of my class with reading scores, reading and re-reading the first Harry Potter book over and over again. Throughout my childhood Harry Potter affected me in others ways, like talking my now best friend for the first time because I was wearing a cape to school until the new harry potter book came out. To me, Harry Potter is freedom, the freedom to read, to speak, and to make new friends. Harry Potter is the reason I have become who I am.