This just isn’t the same. Actually, I’m using that story on the Bollywood Hari Puttar as a cheap excuse to berate the current teen bestseller list. Let’s see, the Twilight series promotes ultra traditional values: meek girls should settle down with manly vampires. And the latest in the Inheritance series, Brisingr, which I’m about a quarter of the way through, has “graduated” from a home-schooled teenager’s Deep Insights on responsibility and identity to scarily S&M-colored self-actualization.

Harry Potter might have been a thinly-disguised English public school jock with geek friends and gay teachers, but at least he was concerned with balancing friendship, teamwork, & individual responsibility while battling evil. Boy, I miss Brit kid lit.