July 11, 2004

With all the emphasis I've placed on children's literature lately, I should now note that July 11th is the birthday of E.B. White....

Having said that, let me state that today I finished reading Shadowmancer, a "young adult" novel by G.P. (Graham) Taylor. As I mentioned before, Taylor is a British vicar, but unlike his character Demurral, he is not an evil puppet of the devil. (That I know of.)

Now, some of the literary hype surrounding Shadowmancer compared it to the Harry Potter series. The same marketing concept was used on the Philip Pullman "His Dark Materials" trilogy (of which I've read The Golden Compass), A Series of Unfortunate Events, the works of Eoin Colfer, the works of Cornelia Funke (which I have not yet been privileged to read), et al.

But that's marketing. Taylor's work is neither as detailed nor as imaginative as Rowling's. When Taylor describes the supernatural creature the thulak, it recalls Rowling's descriptions of dementors. But Taylor shuns the idea that Raphah, or any of the protagonists, could be a wizard or witch. He unequivocally states that witchcraft is a tool of the devil, here called Pyratheon.

(It is unclear to me where Taylor comes up with these names - Pyratheon for the devil, Riathamus for God, Glashan for demons, etc. They may have meanings in Latin, but I don't understand them. I hoped there would be a website discussing the book to help me out here, but  I couldn't find one.)

And the book does tend to be preachy. Biblical phrases come from the mouths of nearly all the characters. The story is interesting enough, but the language can be a little clunky. Taylor uses the trite phrase "like a hot knife through butter" in one such passage. So I would in no way compare Taylor's storytelling style to Rowling's.

(Okay, so there is some language in the Harry Potter books that sounds a little funny to my inner ear. I seem to recall thinking there were a few too many descriptions of how Harry's stomach felt in Goblet of Fire, for instance.)

I would imagine Taylor is closer in spirit to the authors of the Left Behind series, Christian novels about the end of the world that crossed over to mainstream success. Nothing wrong with being a Christian writer, of course--it's not as though J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis suffered in popularity because of their spiritual beliefs....

That said, middle school girls who read Holes and enjoyed Kate Barlow may like reading about tough-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside Kate Coglan. If you find Hermione Granger to be too much of a goody-goody know-it-all, then I recommend Kate Coglan to you.

(Personally, I like Hermione. Her intelligence and level-headedness often save Harry's butt.)

December 14, 2007

In the evening I read online about how J.K. Rowling produced seven, and only seven, handwritten copies of Tales of Beedle the Bard. Fictionally, this is the book that wizard and witch children read, like Muggle children read Grimm's fairy tales. The once-fictional-now-real Beedle has seven tales, one of which is told in Deathly Hallows.

But now she's written the other six. Six copies were given away by Rowling to people who were involved in the writing of the Harry Potter books. She auctioned off the seventh, with all of the proceeds going to charity. (I don't know which charity, but Amnesty International is one of her favorites.) The buyer was Amazon.com. It's unknown at this point whether the general public--and all of Harry's rabid fans--will get to read the tales, or at least an excerpt of them.

December 4, 2002

Today I finished the fourth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It was the darkest, scariest book so far.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6.Harry_Potter_and_the_Goblet_of_Fire

First the Weasleys came and picked Harry up and took him to the Quidditch World Cup. While they were there, the gathered wizards and witches see the Dark Mark, the sign of Lord Voldemort, in the sky.

When school starts, the students learn that Hogwarts will be one of three wizarding schools competing in the Triwizard Tournament. It's a difficult and dangerous competition, so only the 17- and 18-year-olds are supposed to enter.

One student was supposed to be chosen from each school. But the goblet of fire selects 2 students from Hogwarts--Hufflepuff Quidditch player Cedric Diggory, and Harry Potter. (Harry was 11 in the first book, and has aged to 15 in the 4th book.)

The four students battle dragons, survive romantic complications at a Christmas dance, save their friends from the merpeople, and finally enter a maze. Cedric and Harry are just about to win the cup together when they're transported to a graveyard. There, Voldemort uses Harry's blood (and, in a gruesome twist, the severed hand of Wormtail, the wizard formerly known as Scabbers the rat) to get a new body. Cedric dies, but of course Harry fights off Voldemort again. Then Harry lives happily until Book 5 comes out.

Harry has a crush on the Ravenclaw seeker, Cho Chang. But Cho loves Cedric. Well, she did before Cedric died. Ron seems to have a crush on Hermione, but his head is turned by the supernaturally beautiful Fleur Delacour from Baeuxbatons school. (She's part veela, a beautiful woman who can turn into a harpy-like creature.) Hermione has a crush on a Quidditch player from the third school. His name is Viktor Crum. He likes Hermione, too.

Even Hagrid developed a crush, on the Beauxbatons headmistress, who is also half-giant. (She says she's just big-boned.)

Also, we learn that Snape used to be one of Voldemort's followers, the Death Eaters. But then he turned on Voldemort and became a spy, and has been fighting against the dark wizards ever since. Of course there's still the possibility that he may go back to his evil ways. I hope not; I like Snape and I want him to be good, even if he does hate Harry.

And that's just a summary of what I liked about Goblet of Fire.

Appropriately, I saw a TV show about J.K. Rowling on the Biography channel this evening. She said it was not true that she began the first book in coffeehouses because she couldn't afford a flat with heat. The truth is, Scotland is way too cold in the winter to live in an unheated apartment. Her daughter Jessica was an infant then, and now she's about ten. J.K. Rowling recently got remarried, and now she has a baby son, too. She's very creative, and she can draw, too. She also has already written the epilogue to the seventh book, telling what Harry and his friends did when they grew up, who they married, etc.

Personally, I think Ron and Hermione will get married and have seven kids, just like Molly and Arthur Weasley.