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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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