School for Sorcerors: John Vlkovic, 11, wears the garb of his magical alter ego, Harry Potter




Photograph by Skye Dunlap







Spellbound

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books have enchanted kids--and parents--everywhere

By Jessica Lyons

Eleven-year-old John Vlkovic sits quietly on a wooden chair at Hicklebee's Children's Books. But he doesn't blend in. His unruly black hair is combed every which way, mostly straight up; his black bottle-cap glasses are Scotch-taped together and a lightning bolt scar splits his forehead. He's a dead ringer for Harry Potter, the 11-year-old protagonist of Scottish author J.K. Rowling's novels.

"My Quidditch robes are at the seamstress right now, so I'm wearing my muggle clothes," he explains. (As a courtesy to readers not yet versed in Potter-speak, a muggle is a non-magical person, and Quidditch is a sport in which the participants fly on brooms and the balls attack the players.)

His sister Danielle, 11, wears an emerald and purple robe and a velvet pointed cap. A sprinkling of gold glitter runs across her nose. Their mystical dress has become quite commonplace among the nation's 10- to 12-year-olds--almost as ordinary as seeing swooping owls and shooting stars in broad daylight in a J.K. Rowling novel.

"But a lot of people still don't know about the books," Danielle says. "So we tell people. We give people the books for their birthdays, and chocolate frogs." Danielle reaches deep into her wizard robes, and pulls out a treasure. "Here's a chocolate frog for you." Chocolate frogs are one of Harry Potter's favorite treats.

These young wizards-in-training promise to be out in full force on Oct. 28. That's the day J.K. (or Joanne) Rowling rides into Willow Glen to sign her celebrated Harry Potter books for 1,000 fans, some bewitched enough by the phenomenon to spend the night in front of Hicklebee's the night of Sept. 7--the day before tickets to the event went on sale (all 1,000 Rowling tickets disappeared within a half hour). Rowling's third Harry Potter novel, The Prisoner of Azkaban, was also released on Sept. 8 and Hicklebee's co-owner Monica Holmes says the shop sold 700 copies of The Prisoner of Azkaban on that morning alone.

"We had one family who came in their camper from Santa Cruz," Holmes says. "They slept in front of Hicklebee's in their van.

"[On Sept. 8] I was here before 7 a.m., and we already had a good size line curling around Minnesota; it started at 4:30 or 5 a.m. And this is for a book! It isn't for a concert, it's for a book!"

Harry Potter's no ordinary muggle. He's a scrawny orphan who has lived with his cruel aunt and uncle and their spoiled son, Dudley, for 10 years in a cupboard under the stairs. After his 11th birthday, Harry learns he's really a famous wizard. His parents were murdered by the evil Lord Voldemort, but Harry, a baby at the time, survived the attack with a lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead.

The bespectacled boy wizard with unruly black hair and green eyes can fly high above the ground on a broom. He transforms objects with an enchanted holly wand; goes back-to-school shopping for owls, pewter cauldrons and wizards' robes, and sometimes wears his cloak of invisibility. And he's got a growing following that would make even George W. Bush a little jealous.

Rowling's three novels have mysteriously flown to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Last Sunday's New York Times Book Review ranks Rowling's newest novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, as the No. 1-selling hardback novel in its fourth week on the list. The second book in the series, The Chamber of Secrets, in its 18th week on the list, ranks No. 2; and The Sorcerer's Stone, in its 43rd week on the list, weighs in at No. 3. More than 5 million hardback copies of the books have been sold in the United States alone, and the three novels have been translated into 28 languages.

Kid-tested and mother approved, Harry's the biggest thing since C.S. Lewis penned The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first book in "The Narnia Chronicle" fantasy series, in 1950.

Practical Magic

Two neat stacks of hardcover books sit on a wooden table in the Weed's Willow Glen home. Three books belong to 11-year-old Jonathan Weed, and the other three belong to his 9-year-old sister, Rachel.

On nights when everyone is home, and Jonathan and Rachel have finished all their homework, the Weeds observe a family ritual. Everyone piles onto mom and dad's bed, and Jonathan reads Harry Potter out loud.

"This way, mom and dad can read them, too," he says. Plus, they get to hear Jonathan's specialized British accent.

The nightly readings got Rachel hooked. But she's since passed up the rest of her family--who are currently on chapter 18 in book two--and now has finished all three.

By the time they each finish the two collections, Jonathan and Rachel will both own seven Harry Potter novels--seven being the magical number in Rowling's planned series.

One of the Weeds' books, however--Jonathan's copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone--sets itself apart from the rest. Inside its front cover is penned a personal note from Rowling that reads: "To Jonathan, Who has read this FOUR times--I'm so pleased to meet you. J.K. Rowling."

But that was written a long, long time ago--October 1998. The books have since gotten a lot more use. Jonathan has read The Sorcerer's Stone six times, The Chamber of Secrets three times, and The Prisoner of Azkaban "only two times."

Jonathan met Rowling last year at Hicklebee's, when she was still a virtually unknown Scottish author whose books hadn't quite caught on in the United States. About 20 adults and two kids showed up at the book signing. Jonathan, whose mom took him out of school to see Rowling, was one of those two.

"She's very nice, very funny," says Jonathan, a small, polite boy whose face glows as he talks about Rowling. "She seems very imaginative. She was very happy that people were liking her books." One of the more hard-core fans, Jonathan has a strategy worked out to get a jump on the Harry Potter books before they reach the States. He orders the English versions, which are released before their American counterparts, and gets to read about Harry's enchanted adventures about two months before the rest of Harry's American fans. But he doesn't like the English cover art--"it's too cartooney," so, "I read it, then donate it to the library, then wait until the American version comes out. Then I buy the American version."


Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Novel Approach: Jonathan Weed reads aloud to his sister, Rachel, from 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.'




Bewitched

Ten-year-old Dan Goldberg, a serious boy with deep blue eyes, is more of a traditionalist. He had two wall calendars counting down the days to significant, pre-summer events. One was for the release of the new Star Wars movie. The other counted down the days till the release of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. His mom, Donna Lovell, pre-ordered a copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban from Hicklebee's, to ensure that on Sept. 8, Dan wouldn't come home bookless. Today, two Rowling tickets are securely kept under lock and key. They're hidden in Donna's jewelry box for safekeeping.

The Booksin fifth-grader elucidates the Harry Potter storyline in simple, muggle terms: "There's a kid named Harry who you think is just a normal boy and strange things happen to him. He lives with his aunt and uncle until someone comes and tells him he's part of this different world."

It sounds like every middle-schooler's dream come true. In a world where back-to-school shopping is limited to neutral-colored clothing (no gang colors allowed) and see-through back packs, where metal detectors and campus cops greet school kids, shopping for new wizard robes, magic wands and flying brooms is a welcome escape. Who wouldn't want to study "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," or "A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration"? Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is a magical place, straight out of an 11-year-old's imagination, but believable enough to put a smile on the face of the most jaded adult.

The books also give families an activity they can do together.

"We've been reading Harry Potter before it was en vogue to read Harry Potter," says Beryl Grace. "We read the first book last October--it was a birthday present for Josh." Beryl's son, Josh Rosenberg, is a laughing 7-year-old--he'll be 8 on Halloween.

"The books remind me of when Josh was about 4 years old, and we started reading Roald Dahl books to him," Beryl says. "Reading Harry Potter aloud reminds me of them, the magic, the making up of words. They're not mainstream and I like that. They're a little wacky."

Josh, a self-described "sorta-funny" kid, will be Harry for Halloween this year--along with nearly every other boy trick-or-treater. He tells me he doesn't like to read. But Harry Potter books don't count. "I really like it when my mom reads the books to me out loud," he says. "It's fun for me. The seventh book is coming out when I'm 10 and I still want my mom to read it to me."

The Trouble With Harry

Rowling's book three, The Prisoner of Azkaban, begins Harry's third year at Hogwarts. Harry Potter fan websites say book four will be titled Harry Potter and the Quidditch World Cup. Harry and friends, now on the brink of teenagedom, will begin to notice members of the opposite sex. Rowling has also hinted that the remaining four books will turn darker than the first three. It's a story of good and evil, she says, and there will be casualties. People will die, and they will be characters the readers care about, she says. In recent interviews, Rowling has said that readers often beg her not to kill Ron, Harry's best friend. Hermione and even Harry himself could be targets, too; Rowling's not saying one way or the other.

Perhaps it's Rowling's penchant for darkness that has some parents trying to get Harry Potter banned from schools. Last week, a group of parents persuaded the South Carolina Board of Education to review whether the stories should be allowed in schools. They say Harry's too violent for children. In Marietta, Ga., an elementary school principal recently asked a fifth-grade teacher to stop reading the books in class until the school ruled whether they were appropriate. A handful of parents at a school in Lakeville, Minn., also say the books are too scary, but the principal said it was up to the teachers to decide whether to continue reading the books to students. But Harry's enemies still constitute a small sector of the reading public.

Hicklebee's knew all along that Harry Potter was going to be big. Back in September 1998, co-owners Holmes and Valerie Lewis ordered 75 copies of The Sorcerer's Stone--an almost unheard-of order for a novel by an unknown author.

"Usually for a hardcover fiction book like that one, we only order five or six, and that's only if we really like it," Holmes says.

If you're planning on checking out Harry Potter at the library, take a number and stand in line. The San Jose Public Library owns 348 copies of The Sorcerer's Stone (13 copies are at the Willow Glen branch), and yet there's 47 people still waiting to check out the book. The wait only gets worse for the second two. There are 196 people in line for The Chamber of Secrets, and 159 for The Prisoner of Azkaban.

Harry Potter does seem to have cast a spell on kids around the world. But as kids themselves explain, maybe it's not witchcraft after all. Maybe it's just a good, old-fashioned fairy tale that does the trick.

"I like the books because they are exciting," says 11-year-old Andrew Willis, whose mom stood in line at 5:45 a.m. to buy Rowling tickets for Andrew and 9-year-old brother Dan.

"I like the magic and the spells," Andrew says. "They're really interesting and fun to read--real page-turners."

"It has everything you'd want in a book: action, suspense, comedy," Dan adds. "Also the characters are really strong."

Andrew leans on his fist, eyes rolled upwards, and then sums up the publishing phenomenon that is Harry Potter in nine words. "They open up a whole new world of imagination."

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Author J.K. Rowling's Oct. 28 booksigning at Willow Glen High is sold out. Her three novels, 'The Sorcerer's Stone,' 'The Chamber of Secrets' and 'The Prisoner of Azkaban,' are available at Hicklebee's Childrens Books, 1378 Lincoln Ave.

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