Hogwarts Professor

The best part of being a Potter Pundit, besides the fun I have with Travis and James on PotterCast, is meeting readers and talking with them before and after lectures. The second best part? Conversations here and in private correspondence. My books always include my email address — that’s ‘john at HogwartsProfessor dot com’ — and an invitation for feedback, the coveted comments and corrections. I have met many of my best friends in Harry Potter fandom only because they chose to accept that invitation to share their thoughts.

The mailbag feature here at HogwartsProfessor, too, owes its existence and frequent appearances to questions I receive by email. Today’s entry is about the nature of death and just what kind of being the paintings at Hogwarts really are. I received this note from an adult reader new to the series and to serious thinking about the Hogwarts Saga:

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I’m often asked what I would ask Ms. Rowling if I ever met here. Today I think I would ask if H. E. Todd had visited her primary school and read a ‘Bobby Brewster’ story to her.

I learned in September that there was a very popular UK children’s book series published in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s about a boy named Bobby Brewster in which everyday objects talked to the main character much as, say, mirrors and portraits talk in the Wizarding World. One of the short story collections in this series, Bobby Brewster, Detective, has a title in it, ‘Follow that Spider,’ which reminded me of Hagrid’s clue for Chamber of Secrets‘ two boy detectives, spoken as he is hauled off to Azkaban, about following spiders. I ordered the out-of-print title from a UK bookseller.

The author, H. E. Todd, and Bobby Brewster are not in Phil Nel’s book on Harry Potter and children’s literature and Library Lisa at Accio Quotes assures me it isn’t in Rowling interview canon. Reading this remarkable set of recollections of the influence this inspiring author and story-teller had via his visiting schools and reading his stories to children made me wonder if the young Miss Rowling didn’t have such an experience. [Read more…]