Harry Potter Series

Author: J.K. Rowling

      reviewed by Theresa Welsh

Having survived reading all five Harry Potter books, including the final 850 page behemoth (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), I'm ready to add my voice to the millions of words already written about this uniquely successful series. Would I have read any of them if I had not been endlessly urged to do so by my teen-aged daughter? Probably not. But did I enjoy reading them? Yes, you bet!

Harry Potter succeeds because the characters are realistic, the magical world the author has created is incredibly lush and ingenious, and the story deals with the Big Issues -- Good versus Evil, and finding your destiny in a sometimes hostile world. We can all identify with Harry's struggles to discover who he is and what it is he's supposed to do with his life. Of course, Harry is a kid who is still only 15 years old by the fifth book. J. K. Rowling clearly had young people in mind when she wrote these books, and obviously her target audience loves them; you only have to look at the huge worldwide sales of the five books. But I believe these books transcend the genre of fiction for young people. In fact, the Potter books defy classification.

My daughter, like millions of other young people, is a Harry Potter fan. She spent part of 2003 in Europe as an exchange student, where she collected copies of Harry Potter books in various languages, and delighted in discovering small differences between the versions sold in Great Britain and those sold in the US. She got back to Michigan in time for the introduction of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Along with several friends, she made the treck to two local book stores which had special midnight sales on the book's release date. She enjoyed the festivities at one store, where they had a system worked out for the throng of kids who were awaiting the magic moment when the boxes of books were wheeled out, and everyone eventually got the copies they'd reserved. Then she went to another store so she could buy a few more copies for friends who hadn't come along; there she found chaos, as the store had no take-a-number system and kids had simply mobbed the checkout stands when the books were brought out. When have you heard of a book causing such excitement?

I admit, curiosity about what could spark so much enthusiasm, along with my daughter's prodding, drove me to start reading. As a book lover, bookseller and sometimes author, I wondered what I could learn from these stories. Well, there's a number of lessons as well as a bit of just inexplicable fate in the success of the five Harry Potter books. Yes, they are well written, with action that moves right along, nice dialog, and great and believable characters. Perhaps the greatest strength of these books is Harry himself. So many of us can identify with him -- the boy who was picked on and unwanted, but who one day discovers he is a wizard! He finds great friends -- Ron and Hermione -- and attends one of the most fabulous schools anyone ever thought up. Hogwarts, the school for wizards, teaches its young charges to use wands to perform all sorts of magical effects, they learn to ride through the air on broomsticks, to work with magical creatures, and to conjure up all kinds of potions. And the school itself is like no other, with resident ghosts flitting about the Great Hall, where the dinners are gastromonical delights, the hallways are replete with secret entrances and strange dungeons, and the grounds include a lake with real mermaids and a magic forest where unicorns prance about. Who wouldn't want to attend Hogwarts?

I believe the entire series will stand the test of time as real literature. Many editions of the Harry Potter books are taking on high value to collectors. And the movie versions are spreading the saga of the magical world to even more people. Harry Potter will be around generations from now.

It amazes me that Rowling created a world kids like so much they are willing to read books of great length and to stay with the story through literally thousands of pages. Conventional wisdom says books for young people must be short. The subject matter too has been controversial in some quarters. Some members of the religious right think the books are somehow evil because they take you to a world where magic happens. They are so wrong. The magic itself is morally neutral -- it is the use of it that makes it good or evil, and we see plenty of both as the story unfolds. We find the magical world suffers from all the same strengths and weaknesses as the Muggle (non-magical) world, and wizards have all the same emotional conflicts as the rest of us. They, like us, are free to choose which path to take. Despite the mistreatment he got growing up in the home of his Muggle Aunt and Uncle, Harry learns about love and loyalty and struggles as he makes his choice for Good. He is a super role model.

The story features a wonderfully wise and good wizard, Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts, and a Dark Lord who, like Darth Vader in the Star Wars series, discovered and embraced "the dark side" -- the evil uses of magic. These two represent the opposites, but neither comes across as a cardboard character. We learn fairly early in our reading that the Dark Lord Voldemort was once just an ordinary wizard. It is a lesson in choice, as the Dark Lord could have chosen a different path. The story reaches back in time too, as Harry discovers the parents he never knew through other characters and through magical effects that let him go back in time and see his father and mother. What he sees is not the perfect pair he always pictured, but two flawed yet heroic people who loved him. They too made choices, as did Dumbledore, who we discover, has always been Harry's protector. For Harry Potter is no ordinary wizard; he is marked by a connection to the Dark Lord, and Harry too must choose how he will complete his destiny. The story is not finished, and Potter fans eagerly await the next two books.

Would I recommend the Harry Potter books to adults? If you like a good adventure and your tastes run to fantasy and science fiction, you might enjoy these books. They are certainly page-turners, and the author has created a world you'll probably find richer and more inventive than any you've encountered before.

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