Postmodern Story Telling: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Parts of this post were included in chapter 5 of Harry Potter’s Bookshelf: The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures (Berkeley, 2009) so it has been pulled down. Reader comments remain.
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Five (5) Keys for the Serious Reader
The book I am finishing the final edits for this week (go to www.zossima.com to order it at the pre-publication special price) is titled Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader. Almost everything I will write about here at HogPro will relate to one or more of these keys, so let me provide a short introduction to each one, why I think they are important, and how they work together. It helps I think to recall the keys to Moody’s chest in Goblet of Fire. Read More “Five (5) Keys for the Serious Reader”
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The Meaning of “Deathly Hallows”
Merry Christmas to those of you on the Gregorian Calendar! I start this weBlog with the question I have heard the most this last week: “What does the title of the seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, mean?” It caused nearly six pages of speculation on my private boards and I don’t think anyone there feels they have a good grip on it yet. Fair warning: I don’t have any sure answers to the question and I am skeptical of anyone who thinks we will know what it means before the book is in our hands.
Having said that, I have not heard or read anyone saying what I have thought about the title so it shouldn’t hurt if I share my reflections. I’ll start with a friend’s collection of Fandom speculation, continue with my first thoughts, which were about Ms. Rowling’s other six titles, and then move into literary alchemy, one of the five keys I think every serious reader of the books needs to get at their meaning. Read More “The Meaning of “Deathly Hallows””
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Welcome to the new HogwartsProfessor.com!
Hogwarts Professor.com was born in 2004 as a place I could post articles I was working on or pieces I had written in my capacity as HogPro at Barnes and Noble University (BNU) Harry Potter classes. I neglected it for months at a time when I was working on other things or was between BNU courses. This negligence led to complaints and suggestions in my in-box that I needed to update the articles there, take them down, expand and publish them, or just do something! I finally asked Erick to take down all the articles last Spring when I started re-writing them as a book. Over the summer I edited a collection of essays by five Harry Potter mavens that was published as Who Killed Albus Dumbledore? (Zossima Press, 2006) and drafted Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader. Read More “Welcome to the new HogwartsProfessor.com!”