NP Harry Potter Redux
Doug Millison
millison at online-journalist.com
Tue Jul 18 10:46:47 CDT 2000
I suspect that it's the adults who purchased the Harry Potter book
(for a child of their acquaintance, perhaps) who purchased the other
books on the list Derek quotes. Including the publisher is a
bonehead move, the result of a database glitch I suspect.
I have mixed feelings about the media event aspect of the Harry
Potter books (but have to admit that the publication of M&D in '97
was, in its own way, a publicity-driven media event); at the same
time, I'm glad that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came along to
jump-start my son's reading this summer. He whizzed through it and
has moved on to some books on the suggested reading list his school
provided: from Harry Potter to George Orwell's 1984.
I read the first three Harry Potter books to keep up with my son,
found them a bit thin compared to Tolkien perhaps, but it's easy to
keep turning the pages, mindless fun. I don't think they're as rich
as another current series of novels, for young adult readers, that
received some attention at first but got swamped by Potter -- Philip
Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The first two volumes have
been published here, _The Golden Compass_ and _The Subtle Knife_.
--
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