WORLD REPORT EDITION TOP STORY
September 17, 1999
Hooked on Harry
No one is hotter than J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter
The wand chooses the wizard, remember … I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter.
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Something magical is in the air. It is weaving its way across oceans, into bedrooms and under blankets. It is bouncing from backpacks to classrooms to car trips. And all around it is an excited buzz that keeps getting louder and louder and LOUDER!
It's the sound of a spreading spell. The spellbinder is J.K. Rowling, whose wand is very plain. It's not made of phoenix feather or unicorn hair or dragon heartstring. No, her wand is the same one that is used by ordinary people all over the world. It's a pen.
Rowling is the British author of the Harry Potter book series. Last week her third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, arrived in U.S. bookstores. It joins the series' first two books, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Just like the previous Potter books, the new one is taking off faster than you can say Wingardium Leviosa! (In Harry's wizard world, that's a spell to make things fly.)
His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,/ His hair is as dark as a blackboard./ I wish he was mine, he's really divine,/ The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.
- From Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter was born in the mind of J.K. Rowling in 1990. Actually, he wasn't so much born as he just suddenly appeared (or apparated, as wizards would say). "The idea for Harry strolled into my head fully formed," says Rowling. "I still don't know where he came from."
Harry is an orphaned boy with messy hair and a mysterious lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. He lives in England with Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, his nasty aunt and uncle, and their greedy son Dudley.
When Harry is 10, he receives a letter inviting him to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He learns that his parents were a witch and a wizard and he has inherited their gift for magic.
Rowling has imagined an entire wizard world that goes unnoticed by nonwizard people, called Muggles. It's a world full of kooky creations and tongue-tickling new words. "I see (things) in my head, and I try to find the words to fit them," she explains.
She introduces readers to a cast of characters as colorful as a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans (a wizard version of jelly beans, with flavors including strawberry, sardine, coconut, grass - even booger). There's Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts' headmaster; Harry's two best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger; and Draco Malfoy, Hogwarts' meanest bully.
… Some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed.
- From Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Why are so many people hooked on Harry, including kids who aren't usually too keen on reading? "It's one of those rip-roaring good reads that are just pure fun," says Caroline Ward of the American Library Association. Rowling offers her explanation: "Harry has to make his own choices and depend on his own conscience a lot, and I think children enjoy that."
One of those children is Will Schultz, 11, a sixth-grader in Raleigh, North Carolina, who has read all three Harry Potter books. "It has all the things I like - humor, action. You can find your friends, even your own personality, in the characters."
Ryan Shields, 13, of Detroit, Michigan, says he enjoys the books' lightning-fast pace: "It's very suspenseful. Even from the beginning it's good." Ryan's sister, mom and dad have all read the books, and "we passed (one) on to my grandpa just yesterday."
Rowling plans to write one book for each of the seven years that Harry attends Hogwarts. So what does she have up her sleeve? She offers only one mysterious clue: the last word of the last book is scar. No one except Rowling knows for sure what that means, but this much is certain: we'll all wander around with our noses in her books until we find out!
http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/magazines/story/0,6277,55012,00.html