'Harry Potter' Novels Mystify, Delight Students of All Ages

Author: Laura Rockefeller Staff Writer

It was on a train journey from Manchester to London in 1990 that J.K. Rowling created the little boy who has cast a spell over readers on both sides of the Atlantic: Harry Potter.

Rowling was a struggling single mother living with her young daughter in Edinburgh, Scotland until the enthusiastic reception of her first children's book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," set her on a path that has culminated in her becoming one of the richest women in Britain. The first three novels in the Harry Potter series, which will eventually be seven books long (one book for each of Harry's years at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry), took over the top three slots on The New York Times best-seller list for months after their publication.

From that point on, the fascination with Harry Potter and the wizard world he inhabits grew until the fourth and most recent book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," became the fastest selling book in history. This unprecedented success clearly shows that there is something about these books that enchants adults as well as the children for whom they were written.

Doubtless many people who are uninitiated into the wonderful world of Harry Potter are still wondering what all the fuss is about. The posters of Harry that one encounters in bookstores all over America simply show an 11-year-old boy with a thin face, tussled black hair and large glasses. However, the charm of these books lies as much in the wonderful and detailed world of witches and wizards that they describe as it does with the boy hero.

As Eliza Adler '04, one of many Middlebury students who has fallen under the spell of the books, explained, "I love the fantasy of the books. The descriptions are great, and they really take you into another world if you let them." There is something about the attention that Rowling pays to every detail of the world she created for her characters that can be mesmerizing.

Kate Menendez '04 said that the books captivated her because of "the imagination — all the portraits that talk, the ghosts and the owls that deliver the mail. Everything is just so wonderful and described so well that you can imagine it all. You want to go there or be able to do that."

Not since J.R.R. Tolkein's trilogy "Lord of the Rings" or C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia" has such a satisfying magical world been created. Soon this world will be brought to life for Harry Potter fans everywhere with the release of the film version of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Rowling was not initially enthusiastic about the idea of having her novels adapted for film but finally her consent was won, and she has been closely involved with every stage of the production. The film, with a cast including some of Britain's finest actors such as Dame Maggie Smith as Professor Minerva McGonagall, Richard Harris as Albus Dumbledore and Alan Rickman as the sinister Severus Snape, has been one of the most anticipated of the year.

Potter fans were lined up for hours outside of the Odeon West End Theatre in London for the film's premier on Nov. 4. People were there from various age groups and nationalities to discover whether this film would live up to the books they loved.

The much anticipated opening of the film in Middlebury will take place on Nov. 16 at the Marquis Theater. At 3:30 p.m. there will be a special showing in which children in the Middlebury Community Friends program can enter free with their friends from the College. The Middlebury College Activities Board will also be selling tickets for a showing at 10 p.m.

The opening of this film will certainly not be the end of Harry Potter's movie career. There will be more films to follow. Plans are already underway for films of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," the second and third books in the series.

If these films are the successes that they are expected to be, a new film will follow every year until there is a film for each of the seven books in the series. Harry Potter has come a long way from the cupboard under the stairs where he begins book one, but it seems that he and his creator have not reached their journey's end yet.