Thanks to Deborah for this and for yesterday’s Doonesbury Shared Text link!
Publishing Gamemakers Desperate to Conjure up Another Rowling
August 26, 2011 by 11 Comments
A recent Wall Street Journal article profiles newcomer author Erin Morgenstern, whose debut novel The Night Circus is due out next month. The article posits the question of how far publishers are willing to go to find something to replace the Harry Potter cash train they have been riding . Yet, in profiling Morgenstern, the WSJ (inadvertently, perhaps) reveals much about the way the machinery of the publishing industry resembles the Gamemakers of The Hunger Games, but without ever really noticing that the most popular books, like Hunger Games and Twilight are those which are not so much Harry copy-cats as those which draw on the “bag of tricks” used so adroitly by Rowling. Follow me after the jump for more observations on these paradoxes and more.
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Virginia Church’s Harry Potter Vacation Bible School a Wow!
August 21, 2011 by 5 Comments
I spoke at the Church of the Holy Comforter (EC-USA) in Vienna, Virginia, last year where I met Leslie Barnhart, with whom I had been corresponding since she read How Harry Cast His Spell. Her big idea was a Vacation Bible School that turned on the Christian Content of the Hogwarts Saga. I knew that the Rev. Debbie Hough at Derry Presbyterian Church in Hershey, Pennsylvania, had tried to do much the same thing (with great success) but Mrs. Barnhart was talking about an entirely different scale and length of program. She let me see the curriculum for this five day event with 155 campers (!) when we met again at Leaky Con last month and I was astonished at the breadth and depth of what she had planned.
And it worked.
Please read below (after the jump) both her short overview and her detailed account of a VBS program I suspect parishes around the country will be running for years to come. Congratulations, Leslie, on a super job, conception to execution!
Ditch Professor Binns’s Class and Have a Blast from the Past with Harry Potter and History
July 31, 2011 by 2 Comments
In its latest installment in the History and Pop Culture Series, Wiley Publishing has just released Harry Potter and History, edited by Pace University Professor (and friend of this blog) Dr. Nancy Reagin, who also edited Twilight and History. It’s a wonderful collection written by historians from a diverse array of backgrounds covering topics from the real life Nicolas Flamel to the parallels between events in real human history and the history created by J.K. Rowling for her wizarding world. [Read more…]
Alternate Ending? “Real-Life Snape”? Is it April Fool’s Day?
July 23, 2011 by 9 Comments
It should come as no surprise that everyone who ever had contact with J.K. Rowling now thinks that he or she has some sort of inside track on the tale of Harry Potter . (For example. we’ve heard for years about the neighbors named Potter) . Oddly enough, the folks Rowling openly describes as being part of her process (her real teenage friend with the blue Anglia, for example) seldom go about yapping about their deep personal relationship with the Presence. This week, we have an investigative reporter who thinks he knows the “original” ending to Deathly Hallows and the supposed discovery of the “real” Severus Snape. Both of these stories exhibit some interesting lack of insight into Rowling’s personality, style, and statements about her own work. So put on your favorite Headless Hat or other Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes product, and get ready to snort, chuckle, or sneer after the jump. [Read more…]
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