MUGGLES YOUNG AND OLD flocked to their bookshops July 2007 to buy
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, the seventh and final volume in the Harry Potter series. The book sold a record-breaking 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours of sale. Some highlights from our coverage of the wizardry of J.K. Rowling:
Happily, a few chapters into J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which Scholastic Press published last September, our hero receives a letter via owl informing him that he is, in fact, a famous wizard and has won a place at the prestigious Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And with that, the reader and Harry together are plopped down into a world every bit as fantabulous and vividly original as those created by C.S. Lewis, Roald Dahl or, for that matter, George Lucas.
From The Wizard of Hogwarts
By Elizabeth Gleick
Apr. 12, 1999
This year Harry turns 13, and he and his pals Ron and Hermione meet flying Hippogriffs and terrifying Dementors, prison guards who suck the happiness out of people; they take classes in Divination and discover new powers. But as Rowling, with her trademark humor and tight plotting, continues to mine her true themes of betrayal and loyalty, love and loss, the forces of evil are also encroaching.
From Abracadabra!
By Elizabeth Gleick
Jul. 26, 1999
In fact, it is not particularly hard to figure out the rules governing the Harry Potter books. Place appealing characters in interesting but perilous situations and leave the outcome in doubt for as long as possible. Nothing new here, nothing that storytellers as far back as Homer did not grasp and gainfully employ. But, as devoted Harry Potter fans have learned, knowing a magic charm is not the same thing as performing magic.
From Wild About Harry
By Paul Gray
Sep. 20, 1999
First of all, those millions who were enchanted by the first three books will almost certainly feel the same way about Goblet of Fire. Like its predecessors, the new novel is heavily dependent on surprises and suspense.
From Harry's Is Back Again
By Paul Gray
Jul. 17, 2000
Strange, strange things are happening wherever on Earth the young fictional hero and his friends can be found.....Rowling's books have bridged political and cultural chasms; they have altered publishing industries; they have even spurred censorship moves by some religious fundamentalists.
From The Magic of Potter
By Paul Gray
Dec. 25, 2000
The big-screen adaptation is a film of such eye-popping grandeur, dazzling special effects and sumptuous production values that you may not notice right away that supporting characters like Peeves, a troublesome ghost, and Piers, a troublesome boy, have been given the heave-ho. But these visuals serve what is essentially a greatest-hits compilation of the book itself, from the snake that winks at Harry in the zoo to the owls that swoop through his school, Hogwarts, dropping mail on the magically gifted boys and girls....
From The First Look At Harry
By Jess Cagle
Nov. 5, 2001
Now that the first book--Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Philosopher's Stone in the original British version)--is a movie, true Hogwartsians will return to the source and compare written and visual texts with the care of a New Critical scholar.
From Wizardry Without Magic
By Richard Corliss
Nov. 19, 2001
Like Rowling's books, the movies are becoming darker and more intense as they progress.
From The Dark Side of Potter
By Jess Cagle
Oct. 27, 2002
Going into his second year at Hogwarts, Harry is more heroic, and so is Columbus. While he was accused of being too slavishly faithful to Rowling's book the first time around, in Chamber of Secrets the director gives his imagination freer rein.
From When Harry Meets Scary
By Jess Cagle
Nov. 11, 2002
Children buy her [Rowling's] books with their own money. They wear out flashlights reading them after lights-out. Kids with a fear of fat books and dyslexic kids who have never finished a book read Harry Potter not once or twice but a dozen times. Parents report reading levels jumping four grades in two years. They cannot quite believe this gift, that for an entire generation of children, the most powerful entertainment experience of their lives comes not on a screen or a monitor or a disc but on a page.
From The Real Magic Of Harry Potter
By Nancy Gibbs
Jun. 23, 2003
Harry Potter is an orphan whose parents were killed by the evil sorcerer Voldemort when Harry was a baby...He finds another family in his professors and the students Ron and Hermione at Hogwarts, a school for young wizards.
From The Story So Far, Book By Book
By Lev Grossman
Jun. 23, 2003
Photos and Graphics
Just when we might have expected author J.K. Rowling's considerable imaginative energies to flag--this is the fifth book of a projected seven-volume series--she has hit peak form and is gaining speed.
From That Old Black Magic
By Lev Grossman
Jun. 30, 2003
In the values Hollywood understands, worldwide box-office income, the first two films from the J.K. Rowling books outperformed the first two Tolkien films, $1.84 billion to $1.78 billion. Reason enough to continue with the education of Harry Potter.
From When Harry Met Sirius
By Richard Corliss
Jun. 7, 2004
Granted, Rowling's books begin like invitations to garden-variety escapism: Ooh, Harry isn't really a poor orphan; he's actually a wealthy wizard who rides a secret train to a castle, and so on. But as they go on, you realize that while the fun stuff is pure cotton candy, the problems are very real--embarrassment, prejudice, depression, anger, poverty, death.
From J.K. Rowling Hogwarts And All
By Lev Grossman
Jul. 25, 2005
Granted, Rowling's books begin like invitations to garden-variety escapism: Ooh, Harry isn't really a poor orphan; he's actually a wealthy wizard who rides a secret train to a castle, and so on. But as they go on, you realize that while the fun stuff is pure cotton candy, the problems are very real--embarrassment, prejudice, depression, anger, poverty, death.
From Growing Up Potter
By Lev Grossman and Jumana Farouky
Nov. 7, 2005
As honor student Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series, the British actress believably delivers goody-goody lines like, "I'm going to bed before either of you comes up with another clever idea to get us killed, or worse, expelled!"
From Hollywood Raises Good Girls, Too
By Rebecca Winters Keegan
Jun. 15, 2007
For the magic moment to happen, the theory goes, the reader's mind must be preserved in a state of absolute innocence[EM]it must be, in Internet parlance, spoiler-free. So to preserve the magic moment against informational contamination[EM]via the Web or watercooler conversation or the Rita Skeeters of the global media[EM]Scholastic has created an infrastructure around Deathly Hallows unlike anything the publishing world has ever seen!
From Harry Potter and the Sinister Spoilers
By Lev Grossman and Andrea Sachs
Jun. 28, 2007
Special Report: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
The confrontation is swift, vivid, scary and, to the audience, assuring: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be a good one. Fully as satisfying, it turns out, as the excellent third and fourth movies in the series. The tone and palette are darker, the characters more desperate and more determined.
From Harry Potter Grows Older and Darker
By Richard Corliss
Jul. 10, 2007
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