Dear bobthemanatee --

That was a lovely and quite amusing poem!

It seemed so light and sweet and innocent. In fact, those words are just about the adjectives that I would apply to your Muggle who accidentally wandered onto the platform. The word choice and structure of this poem really suited the mood of wonder and amazement.

These lines in particular were, I thought, very representative of that mood of wonder and lightness:

Of all the creatures – short stubby elves,
So small they could fit in our local bookstore's shelves

(I also thought that the rhyming structure further added to that innocence of the poem).

It was actually rather amusing for me to think about how a Muggle might have wandered onto the platform. And, of course, if one wandered on, what would happen? I rather liked your interpretation of how the Muggle would have caught a glimpse of the magical world and then would have had his memory wiped. I think that Obliviation was absolutely something that would have happened at some point – and quickly, too. I also sort of think, however, that the entire thing would have been programmed to make it seem as though there was just a small crevice or recess if someone didn’t have any magical ability. But, I definitely like your interpretation of events.

One thing that I especially noticed in this poem was your use of punctuation. You, in a very short space, utilize two ellipses and quite a few exclamation marks (not to mention a few double punctuation marks). I think that you might want to be a little bit more judicious with your use of punctuation. Dramatic punctuation (exclamation marks and ellipses) are meant to add emphasis and you don’t want to overdo that. I also want to warn you about the double punctuation – using both the question mark and the exclamation mark together. While that does express a lot of emotion, in formal writing you want the words to express more than the punctuation. I thought that your word choice was very good and could have expressed the same emotions without the excess of punctuation.

I’m quite interested to see where you’re going to take this poem in future chapters. As you noted before the start of the poem, this chapter is from the point of view of a Muggle. Perhaps the next will be from the point of view of a wizard? Maybe the one who Obliviated the Muggle? I’m also interested to see if you simply repeat this moment from several points of view or if you continue the story with what happens afterwards.

A lovely read!

~Kelly