07/22/07 — With worldwide sales of 325 million copies in 64 languages long before Saturday’s release of the seventh and final book in her Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling is in a league of her own when it comes to knowing how to sell a book.

As buyers lined up across the globe for the 12:01 a.m. Saturday release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” however, skeptics cautioned that the enormous popularity of the series has overshadowed consideration of its literary merits.

“She has no peer when it comes to book sales, but can she take her place alongside the creators of ‘Winnie the Pooh,’ ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ ‘Little Women,’ ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia,’ some of the classics in children’s literature?” Bob Hoover asked Wednesday in the pages of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“Definitely,” replied Richard Curry, a teacher whose Advanced Placement English students at Meadville Area Senior High School have been excited for some time about the long-awaited release of both the seventh book and the fifth film in the series.

“I think the determining factor is how imaginative and how bright the student is,” he said Friday. “The brighter students are very enthusiastic about Harry Potter and the whole story line. Many of them have read them three or four times.”



A classic

by any other name

Harry Potter isn’t just a trend that will pass, but it also isn’t destined to be a classic, Lisa Dennis, a specialist in children’s books for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh who has read all six of the adventures, told Hoover.

“I don’t think (Rowling’s) writing will stand the test of time,” she said. “The series will have long life because I think the original readers will share it with their children, a family favorite for a very long time. I still think Lloyd Alexander and his ‘Westmark Trilogy’ is better written and has more original characters than the Potter books.”

Mary Lee Minnis, head of youth services and assistant director of Meadville Public Library, disagrees. “Yes, it will become a classic,” she said of the Potter series. “I think children who are reading it today will pass their love of the series down to their children and grandchildren,” she added. “I think he’ll stick around.”

However, she isn’t about to sell either author short. “They’re both big favorites of mine,” she said Friday, noting that Alexander, who has been writing children’s books since the early 1960s, has been a favorite longer. “J.K. Rowling would be very lucky to have a career like his,” Minnis added, speaking fondly of the Philadelphia-based author who died May 17.

“I believe they will pass the test of time,” Curry agreed, talking to the Tribune hours before the release of Rowling’s seventh volume. “I think it depends on how she ends the final work. If it leaves the reader with that same sense of wonder and excitement — challenging the imagination of not just children but people who may have a childish sense of awe about them — I think they will become classics.”

When it comes to literary merit, Curry says critics like Dennis are missing the point.

“Potter doesn’t have the philosophical and psychological probing of truth that some of the great works have,” he said. “But as stories that dramatically show a conflict of good versus evil, I would compare them more with the Tolkien novels: ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ series and ‘The Hobbit.’

“You cannot compare these with the great philosophical novels,” Curry continued. “Rowling doesn’t attempt to do that.”

She’s not alone, he added. Kurt Vonnegut, for example, approached life from a very different perspective than other writers of his time period. “Just as Vonnegut has achieved the kind of recognition he has as a classicist, Rowling will achieve it the same way,” Curry continued. “I think she’s done one hell of a job.”

He is, he added, feeling very sorry for all of the seven publishing companies that rejected Rowling’s work before she finally found a publisher.

“What terrible, terrible thoughts must be going through their minds,” Curry said with a chuckle. “They had to be people of little imagination — as soon as the first book came out, people went wild for them.” Having just returned from a visit to Thailand, “college kids I talked to there were all excited about the Harry Potter book that was coming out soon,” he added.



Mary Spicer can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at mspicer@meadvilletribune.com. Scripps-Howard contributed to this piece.



For this week’s Sunday Issue, we invite you to “Sound Off” on the literary strength of the Harry Potter book series. Do you think these works will stand the test of time and qualify as literary masterpieces? Or have they been driven by over-hyped media attention and will eventually fade away? Your comments and letters on this issue will appear on next Sunday’s Opinion & Comment page. For instructions on submitting correspondence, please see page A4.

Will the Harry Potter series stand the test of time?