WIZ KIDS

My, how time flies. And how fast our young wizards and witches grow up right before our eyes. Wasn’t it only yesterday that we banished young orphan Harry to the cubby beneath the stairs? And just look at him now — off at Hogwarts earning a first-rate education to defend against the dark arts, dealing with faculty and Slytherins, navigating puberty and first crushes, sorting out his troubled heritage, and engaging in extracurricular warfare against Dementors and Death Eaters and He Who Must Not Be Named. Cherish these moments. They’ll be gone before you know it. The fifth cinematic installment of J.K. Rowling’s sprawling monument to literary capitalism, 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, screens at noon today at the Kansas City Public Library’s Plaza Branch (4801 Main, 816-701-3481) as part of the library’s free Surreal Saturday film series aimed at kids ages 12 to 17.

Sat., Dec. 26, noon, 2009