November 2001

What can be said about Harry Potter? He's here! The life of young Harry Potter has captured the imagination of 100,000,000 readers and counting. Why? Because he's a real boy -- straight from the imagination of J. K. Rowling.

Here she was, divorced, living on public assistance in an Edinburgh flat (translation: living on welfare in subsidized housing) enjoying a cup of coffee at a table in a cafe while her infant daughter napped (I'll assume in a carriage by her side), escaping her lot in life by scribbling Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Lest you think that poor, uneducated single parent is part of that profile, let me assure you Ms. Rowling is a graduate of Exeter University and a teacher, albeit unemployed when she started to rescue Harry from places no little boy should find himself. In spite of all his travails, he survives and goes from dependence to independence.

"The idea that we could have a child who escapes from the confines of the adult world and goes somewhere where he has power, both literally and metaphorically, really appealed to me," the author explains. "I was very low," Rowling has said. "I had to achieve something. Without the challenge I would have gone stark raving mad."

She was just an ordinary woman, after all, yet she found herself in unbelievably extraordinary circumstances.

She wrote about an ordinary boy in extraordinary circumstances, living with cruelty, banished to a life where his room is a closet under the stairs. Well, wouldn't you want to escape? And wouldn't every reader identify with Harry on some level? And wouldn't they all fear for their lives, certain they couldn't prevail, until they see Harry emerge victorious.?

I haven't read the Harry Potter books. But, I have read up on him. I know children and parents parked outside Barnes and Noble Bookstores at midnight on the appointed date to get the newly released book in the series.

Parents have braved crowds before in the name of getting their children what they want. Remember the Cabbage Patch Doll? And then, it was Tickle Me Elmo, Beanie Babies -- and the special Purple Bear Beanie Baby in honor of Princess Diana, proceeds going to the special Land Mine Society created in her name. "Oh, I gotta have it, Mom."

I thought something was wrong with that need to possess, but I got into it myself when a three year old fell in love with Sesame Street's adorable little Elmo. Tickle that furry little belly and he laughs, and the child laughs, and the world is so fine in that moment.

Within hours, the same child is sitting in front of the television set, Elmo in one hand, thumb of the other in his mouth. Any flight of the imagination is grounded in the reality of what's on. Older children have two thumbs going on a Play Station what-do-you-call-it while imagination is stifled. They compete against the program or themselves with acquired skill and no imagination. These prizes they cherish merely involve possession, not involvement.

Harry Potter, however, has grabbed them from the television set and play stations, lifted them from the couch as swiftly as he himself is lifted on his flying broomstick. He learns the tricks of the wizard's trade. They are involved. They're right there when Harry comes upon a warning that if he returns to the school of wizardry, disaster would strike. It turns out to be true and Harry is faced with new torments and the reader bravely goes along with him.

Not having read Harry Potter, I can only visualize Dorothy on her way to see the Wizard of Oz. From an adult's view, I can see one tragic turn after the other. As Dorothy made it through, so did I and when Dorothy finally got back to Kansas, she had learned something we might not have realized: there's no place like home.

Along with everything else about Harry, in messages not planted but matter-of-fact, the young readers learn about being brave, standing tall, love is powerful and truth will out.

Best of all, Harry Potter must be read, word by word, line by line, page by page, until a very thick book comes to "The End." And, these Potter fans are reading five-syllable words, not one ever substituted for the age-appropriate 108 words intended for their level.

Who cares if human beings are referred to as "muggles" in this otherworldly fantasy, there is power in the triumph of love and the truths learned. There was a movement in the United Kingdom to ban the Harry Potter books on grounds that his going to a school to learn wizardry was encouraging the young to dabble in the occult, to invoke Satan. I think those protesters are suffering from stifled imagination: too much reality on Gilligan's Island, not enough Cinderella. The readers are not embracing the occult, they're finding standards to live by.

While J. K. Rowling was leading Harry Potter out of his miserable life with his only living relatives -- his aunt and uncle, the miserable Dursleys -- he was leading her toward a fairy tale ending. She was looking for a challenge and he empowered her.

Sales passed 100,000,000 books, and if the author only receives one dollar each, she is one hundred million dollars richer than when she sipped coffee a few years ago.