The Magic Of Harry Potter

Three and a half years ago, no one on earth had heard of Harry Potter except J.K. Rowling, the writer who dreamed him up, and the publishers' readers who had rejected the manuscript of her first book featuring the bespectacled boy wizard. And now? Four Harry Potter novels later, translations into 42 languages later, 76 million copies sold worldwide later? Strange, strange things are happening wherever on Earth the young fictional hero and his friends can be found.

--In Germany, Eberhard Barmann, president of the Berlin magicians' club Zauberfreunde, reports that "more and more grandparents and parents are calling me because they want to know where their grandchildren and children can learn conjuring tricks." Barmann's colleague Wilfried Possin, the head of a magicians' organization in Frankfurt, attributes this surge of interest to Harry Potter: "The books have brought our trade into the limelight."

--Last July the New York Times Book Review revised its best-seller list by splitting off a separate category for children's books. The move came just in time to prevent Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from zooming to the top of the fiction list--and joining the three earlier Harry Potter titles firmly ensconced among the 15 slots. By shunting the wizard books out of its main chart, the Book Review fiddled with logic but appeased publishers and authors who believed they had been "Pottered"--denied best-selling status by the J.K. Rowling juggernaut.

--In China the People's Literature Publishing House, which once issued the collected poems of Chairman Mao, this year released 600,000 boxed sets of translations of the first three Harry Potters, the largest first printing of any fiction since the communists came to power in 1949.

Rowling's books have bridged political and cultural chasms; they have altered publishing industries; they have even spurred censorship moves by some religious fundamentalists. But any assessment of her extraordinary impact should focus principally on the private transaction, as old as storytelling, between the speaker and the listener or, a more recent innovation, the writer and the reader.

Here, in the hush of the imagination, is where Rowling works her magic. Listen to her readers; listen to the children.

Tyler Walton, 9, who submitted an essay for Scholastic's "How the Harry Potter Books Changed My Life" contest, has undergone arduous treatment for leukemia. "Harry Potter helped me get through some really hard and scary times," he wrote. "I sometimes think of Harry Potter and me as being kind of alike. He was forced into situations he couldn't control and had to face an enemy that he didn't know if he could beat."

Ashley Marie Rhodes-Courter, 15, another contestant, lived in 14 foster homes over a 10-year period. "Harry has a lightning scar on his forehead to remind him of his past," she wrote. "There's one on my back to remind me of mine."