December 3rd, 2008 § by A
Joseph Buttom at First Things suggests that children’s literature has never been better, and offers some terrific observations along the way:
Rowling had literary reasons for her triumph—these were pretty good books—but she had social reasons, as well. Europe and America still have a hunger for the shared topic of conversation that is the main benefit of a middlebrow literary culture. The trashy bestsellerdom of the lowbrow may be shared, but it gives us nothing to talk about. The glossy unbestsellerdom of the highbrow may give us something to talk about, but it isn’t shared. Once a middlebrow book reaches a certain number of readers, however, it begins to feed on its success to gain even higher success. Add in the even greater hunger of middlebrow parents for their children to have shared literary references, and you have an appetite ravening for something like Harry Potter to feed it.
October 28th, 2008 § by A
Richard Dawkins is taking time off from Oxford University to write a children’s book. He wants to look into the effects of “bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards… I think it is anti-scientific – whether that has a pernicious effect, I don’t know. I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s something for research.” He plans to “demolish” the Judeo-Christian myth, calls teaching children about hell “child abuse”, has not read Harry Potter, but praises Philip Pullman.
Added to the list of people who are not allowed to write children’s books (which currently includes actors, singers, politicians, reformed theologians): “prominent atheists”. Putting all other professions on notice.
September 9th, 2008 § by C
The verdict is in: The Harry Potter Encyclopedia has been banned from publication.
We could go in circles all day about copyright law here on the site, but this is the type of battle authors will lose in the coming years. The internet is making people far more valuable than information. America no longer cares about the merit of a creative work nearly as much as they care what Oprah has to say about it. She got legions of middle-aged women to read Russian literature. Go figure.
Until then, though, the tragedy: it now appears that we won’t have a handy way of looking up the spelling and pronunciation of wingardium leviosa.
Oh, wait. Wikipedia. Nevermind.