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| HARRY
POTTER SERIES BY J K ROWLING
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 July
8, 2000 was the date of release for the fourth in the series of the
unbelievably successful Harry Potter books. This one is called
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and has been launched with
unprecedented media frenzy and store campaigns in the U.S.
and U.K. What is it about Harry Potter that has made today's
techno-whiz kids put aside Nintendo and revel in groundskeepers and
muggles and goblins and tea sausages? What is it that has made adults
pick up the book too - and refuse to put it down, till they're through?
Call it Peter Pan, call it magic - call it whatever. Better still;
don't let's quibble over names and rush, instead, to get our copy.
For the uninitiated, the main character, Harry Potter, is an unassuming
child who discovers his magical powers and trains at the Hogwarts
School for witches and wizards. Each book of the series is filled
with a fantasy adventure that takes the reader through a world of
magic, monsters, heroes and villains. We have a dairy that writes
back, ancestral portraits that primp and curl their hair every night
and a professor who died, didn't notice it and continued to teach
as a ghost. J.K. Rowling's wry sense of humour gives the storylines
light moments (In 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets' Harry
is warned that reading some books are dangerous: '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.)
and this keeps them from becoming too frightening.
 So
who is this J.K. Rowling, whose first book 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone' topped the bestseller list of the New York Times for fifteen
weeks in a row? Jeanne Kathleen Rowling lives in Edinburgh and has
been writing 'all her life'. Her first book was written at the age
of six and was about a rabbit called 'rabbit'. She thought of the
Harry Potter plot on a seemingly endless train journey from Manchester
to London. By the time she reached London, she had already conceived
most of the characters and thought up most of the names. Divorced,
a single parent and without a job, she was managing on public assistance,
when she started the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone (published in Great Britain as Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone). She did most of her writing in cafés, while
her infant daughter slept.
The books haven't been without controversy, though. Many parents and
schools are lobbying to have the books banned because of the occult
elements in them. Rowling is also being sued by a writer by the name
of Nancy Stouffer, claiming that many of the names of the characters
have been taken from a book she herself published in the late 1980s.
So what are you waiting for? We advise you to go right ahead and
purchase your own Harry Potter soon. You have four to choose from
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Prisoner
of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer's Stone. If you can't make up your mind which
one to buy, buy them all! |
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