educating alice

 ”It has been the worst break-up of my life - far worse than splitting up with any man,” Rowling said. “But it has also been wonderful to stop and draw breath and think, ‘My God, look what’s happened with an idea I had 17 years ago on a train’.”

Rowling grieves for lost wizard | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Books

Missed this one back in July:

Harry Potter: The Complete Obituaries — Vulture — Entertainment & Culture Blog — New York Magazine

I was very fortunate today to be invited by Scholastic to attend J. K. Rowling’s morning reading at Carnegie Hall. 1600 school kids were there, 40 kids from 40 schools. They were justifiably excited and so was I!

Rowling read the chapter in the final book where Harry said good-bye to the Dursleys. It was just very cool to hear her read live, her very own words. She’s a very good reader!

After that she answered a bunch of questions from kids. They were all excellent and sadly I didn’t take notes so you will have to rely on others for the details. One friend, GraceAnne DeCandido did take excellent notes and sent an excellent overview to the Leaky Cauldron. (In the second part of this post.) I’m sure there will be many more reports before long.

It was a thrilled to be there. I’m saving my golden ticket!

 J.K. Rowling Talks About Christian Imagery

Sprechen Sie Potter? How Harry is spreading the English language | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Books

Alison Lurie ranges broadly, writing novels and nonfiction for adults as well as literary criticism on a range of subjects. Her provocative essays on children’s literature have been published in collections such Boys and Girls Forever and Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups. And now she has weighed in on Harry Potter at The New York Review of Books.

Daniel H. Nexon, a professor of government at Georgetown University, has some extremely interesting things to say about Harry Potter in the world. Thanks to a post at Hogwartsprofessor I found his notes for the keynote he gave recently at the Prophecy 2007 conference. Among other things Nexon sees Harry Potter, “… not merely a reinterpretation of folklore, it is a, functionally speaking, contemporary folklore. And more than that, it is folklore on a global scale. Or, as I’ve argued in various settings, Harry Potter is cultural globalization: it is part of the creation of transnational common currency of narratives, personages, themes, and other circulating commonplaces.” I also found this very interesting article of his, “How Harry Potter Explains the World.”

After reading Christopher Hitchens’ review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in today’s New York Times Book Review, the Round Table on Harry Potter (with Orson Scott Card, Lois Lowry, Hank Green, Roger Sutton among others weighing in), you can listen to a podcast of the editor, Sam Tanenhaus, and children’s book editor, Julie Just, discussing “the Harry Potter phenomenon.” During the very interesting conversation, Just explains why she thought Hitchens would be a worthy candidate to review the book.

On child_lit someone noted how extraordinary it was to be part of a world of readers that Saturday, July 21. To be aware that millions all over the world were all reading the same book you were. Incredible …. And so I am now fascinated by the way so many of us are experiencing this particular story. We often read and then extend our readings by talking about a particular book. Sometimes we see a movie of it too. And sometimes we may also read or see interviews with the author about the book. Hear them talk about their books and read from them. But I feel this is somehow different (or maybe just more). To have the story of Harry Potter heightened by Jim Dale, Rupert, Emma, and Daniel; by the online conversations, the release parties, Rowling’s interviews — all of this is turning it into a very interesting new kind of story I think. Does anyone else feel this way or am I just getting carried away?

After writing this in a post to the ccbc-net list serve yesterday I received an interesting email from Marc Aronson who suggested that this was what sociologist Benedict Anderson called the “imagined community.” One compelling example Marc offered was that of large numbers of people reading a particular part of a religious work all over the world at services on a particular holy day. Completely unfamiliar with this idea and curious to see if I could find a bit more about it in terms of books and reading, I did a little looking around and found this article about bloggers being an imagined community and this conference built around the idea, “The notion of the imagined community in our program title, of course, refers to Benedict Anderson’s concept of the nation as a particular kind of imagined community, in which experiences of commonality, and a sense of the self as being part of a wider national community, are to a large extent facilitated by shared practices of reading mass mediated texts.” Unfortunately, I truly don’t have the time to go down this path, but if anyone knows more and/or has some sources to explore, please do provide them in the comments. And, of course, if you just want to weigh in on the idea, please do that too!

Here’s a very interesting blog for those interested in further exploration of some of the scholarly issues around the series.

HogwartsProfessor.com