Once upon a time, long ago, before there was email and when CBC radio programs were spliced together with razor blades, book publishers sent actual people around to talk about their catalogues. One of these visits I have never forgotten.

The rep told me about all the books that might be relevant to what we were broadcasting and then pulled one last thing from her bag, almost as an afterthought.

"I know you don't do kids' books," she said a little shyly. "But this is a new one from England. And we've never seen anything like it."

She then went on to say that kids and their parents were bombarding the company's London office demanding to know when the sequel was coming out.

The book of course was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first in a remarkable series. I started reading it that night on the subway ride home and by the next morning I, too, was a fan of the bespectacled orphan wizard and his Hogwarts' gang.

Stupefied

For me, the book recalled a mix of nostalgic pleasures. It offered a bit of Enid Blyton's boarding school stories, where midnight feasts involved copious amounts of tinned ham and ginger pop, and where parents only had to be dealt with a few times a year.

Potter also reminded me of my favorite anti-hero, the irrepressible William Brown and his gang ("the Outlaws") who scuffled along the hedgerows and sleepy villages of England in the 1930s and '40s, trying to do good but invariably wreaking mischief.

Two of the author's little wizards, Lydia, 7, and Nathaniel, one-and- a-half, at the Ontario Science Centre's Harry Potter exhibit. (Anna-Liza Kozma/CBC)

When I was 11 (have you ever noticed how many child heroes begin their adventures at this age?), I was William.

My red Marks and Spencer's shorts were stuffed with string like his. I took a mouse to school hidden in my blazer pocket as he did and I wore a boy's school cap at the same jaunty angle.

Harry Potter was reminiscent of these young adventurers — but richer.

From the very beginning, there was something redemptive in the tale of this dweeby, skinny kid who was forced to sleep in a spider-filled cupboard under the stairs and grew into a wizard who could conjure snakes and slay giant tarantulas with a flick of his wand.

No wonder my kids took to him the way I did.

Nowadays they leap around the house waving chopsticks and twigs at each other, shouting "Stupefy!" "Accio!" and "Leviosa!" while flicking their flashlights with the command "Lumos!"

Part of our lives

Harry Potter is so much part of our daily life — in the car, as well as when doing the supper dishes, we've listened countless times to the audio books read by British actor Jim Dale — that when I heard about the new Harry Potter exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre I couldn't wait to pack everyone up and teleport ourselves down to see it.

When we arrived at the exhibit a group of teenagers were already there in the lineup, all in convincing black robes, brandishing wands.

We smiled at each other as members of a secret club. "You've got hair just like Ginny Weasley," one of the girls told my red-haired daughter enviously.

We moved into a dark chamber to be greeted by a young man with a British accent and Hogwarts cloak saying "Come along, come along now, no time to waste. You mustn't be late for class." He had the tone perfectly and, for a second, I felt I was back in my old school being chivied by a prefect.

"Oh my God, there's the sorting hat!" exclaimed one of the teens.

We all watched as each of the kids in turn sat on a stool and tried on the battered wizard's topper and their fate — Gryffindor House for two of them, Ravenclaw for one — echoed from loud speakers.

The kids charged ahead, passed the Hogwarts Express, through the steam, into the main exhibit.

While we lingered over the carved intricacies of Professor Snape's black wand and Hagrid's hut, the kids bolted off past the Quidditch hoops to pull a plastic mandrake in Professor Sprout's greenhouse.

At the gift shop, we cajoled our kids away from the $49.99 boxed wands, convincing them that chopsticks and twigs can be just as effective.

But there was one thing we did buy — Roger Highfield's wonderful paperback, The Science of Harry Potter, which, among other things, highlights Harry's intergenerational allure.

The power of magic

The Science Centre has, of course, been criticized for hosting an exhibition that is, in essence, a series of glorified movies sets and props. But Highfield leaves no philosopher's stone unturned in his exploration of the connections between magic and science — and, as I see it, parenting.

The editor of the New Scientist, Highfield pulls together a rich web of mathematical and scientific conundrums, citing brilliant minds, like the Austrian mathematician Kurt Godel, to demonstrate that faith, magic if you will, is an indisputable element in scientific exploration.

The father of Holly, 10, and Rory, 7, Highfield loves Harry Potter's world. And he seems to relish the books for the same reasons I do.

Because they conjure up a world rich in catch phrases, characters and story lines that we can genuinely enjoy with our children.

Harry is a quantum leap from the cardboard cut-outs of Clifford the Big Red Dog or the dreaded Berenstain Bears.

More than that, Harry Potter's world gives us a hope-filled universe to inhabit together, where despite snares and dangers everything works out for the best.

"The function of magic is to ritualize man's optimism to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear," says Highfield, quoting the anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski. "Magic expresses the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism."

What more can you expect from a ripping good yarn? Except, of course, the hope that it will be one your kids will read to their children someday, while you sit by, casting your spells with chopsticks and twigs.