[Paleopsych] NYT: Harry Potter Works His Magic Again in a Far Darker Tale

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Harry Potter Works His Magic Again in a Far Darker Tale
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/books/16choc.html

[Several articles appended, with the pope weighing in in the last one. As 
with the previous two, we're getting our copy directly from England and 
not buying the dumbed-down translation into American, where crumpets are 
called English muffins, not the same thing at all! It took about a week to 
get the original. Why so long, I don't know. The discount was greater 
there, so even with postage for air delivery, it was actually cheaper. We 
got an e-mail at 10:00 am yesterday, presumably GMT, saying the book had 
been shipped, 14 hours before the official release. I have a picture of 
the author on the door of my office, on the grounds that she knows more 
about how to get kids to read than all 4,700 bureaucrats at the U.S. 
Department of Education. Everyone laughs when I make this claim. So far 
not a single soul has contested its truth. I suggested that we invite the 
author to come visit and share her thoughts. Not enough money in the 
budget, I was told, though it would have cost 0.01% of the annual budget 
at the most.]

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
By J. K. Rowling.
Illustrations by Mary GrandPré.
632 pages. Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic. $29.99.

    By [3]MICHIKO KAKUTANI

    In an earlier Harry Potter novel, Sibyll Trelawney, divination
    teacher, looks at Harry and declares that her inner eye sees past his
    "brave face to the troubled soul within."

    "I regret to say that your worries are not baseless," she adds. "I see
    difficult times ahead for you, alas ... most difficult ... I fear the
    thing you dread will indeed come to pass ... and perhaps sooner than
    you think."

    In "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," that frightening prophecy
    does in fact come true - in a thoroughly harrowing denouement that
    sees the death of yet another important person in Harry's life, and
    that renders this, the sixth volume of the series, the darkest and
    most unsettling installment yet.

    It is a novel that pulls together dozens of plot strands from previous
    volumes, underscoring how cleverly and carefully J. K. Rowling has
    assembled this giant jigsaw puzzle of an epic. It is also a novel that
    depicts Harry Potter, now 16, as more alone than ever - all too well
    aware of loss and death, and increasingly isolated by his growing
    reputation as "the Chosen One," picked from among all others to do
    battle with the Dark Lord, Voldemort.

    As the novel opens, the wizarding world is at war: Lord Voldemort and
    his Death Eaters have grown so powerful that their evil deeds have
    spilled over into the Muggle world of nonmagic folks. The Muggles'
    prime minister has been alerted by the Ministry of Magic about the
    rise of Voldemort. And the terrible things that Ms. Rowling describes
    as being abroad in the green and pleasant land of England read like a
    grim echo of events in our own post-9/11, post-7/7 world and an
    uncanny reminder that the Hogwarts Express, which Harry and his
    friends all take to school, leaves from King's Cross station - the
    very station where the suspected London bombers gathered minutes
    before the explosions that rocked the city nine days ago.

    Harry, who as an infant miraculously survived a Voldemort attack that
    killed his mother and father, is regarded as "a symbol of hope" by
    many in the wizarding world, and as he learns more about the Dark
    Lord's obsession with his family, he realizes that he has a destiny he
    cannot escape. Like Luke Skywalker, he is eager to play the role of
    hero. But like Spider-Man, he is also aware of the burden that that
    role imposes: although he has developed romantic yearnings for a
    certain girl, he is wary of involvement, given his recognition of the
    dangers he will have to face.

    "It's been like ... like something out of someone else's life, these
    last few weeks with you," he tells her. "But I can't ... we can't ...
    I've got things to do alone now."

    Indeed, the perilous task Professor Dumbledore sets Harry in this
    volume will leave him with less and less time for Quidditch and
    hanging out with his pals Ron and Hermione: he is to help his beloved
    teacher find four missing Horcruxes - super-secret, magical objects in
    which Voldemort has secreted parts of his soul as a means of ensuring
    his immortality. Only when all of these items have been found and
    destroyed, Harry is told, can the Dark Lord finally be vanquished.

    There are a host of other unsettling developments in this novel, too:
    the Dementors, those fearsome creatures in charge of guarding Azkaban
    Prison, have joined forces with Voldemort; Draco Malfoy, Harry's
    sneering classmate who boasts of moving on to "bigger and better
    things," appears to vanish regularly from the school grounds; the
    sinister Severus Snape has been named the new teacher of defense
    against the dark arts; two Hogwarts students are nearly killed in
    mysterious attacks; and Dumbledore suddenly turns up with a badly
    injured hand, which he declines to explain. One of the few bright
    spots in Harry's school life appears to be an old textbook annotated
    by its enigmatic former owner, who goes by the name the Half-Blood
    Prince - a book that initially supplies Harry with some helpful tips
    for making potions.

    The early and middle sections of this novel meld the ordinary and the
    fantastic in the playful fashion Ms. Rowling has patented in her
    previous books, capturing adolescent angst about boy-girl and
    student-teacher relations with perfect pitch. Ron and Hermione, as
    well as Harry, all become involved in romantic flirtations with other
    students, even as they begin to realize that their O.W.L. (Ordinary
    Wizarding Level) grades may well determine the course of their
    post-Hogwarts future. As the story proceeds, however, it grows
    progressively more somber, eventually becoming positively Miltonian in
    its darkness. In fact, two of the novel's final scenes - like the
    violent showdown between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in the
    last "Star Wars" movie, "Revenge of the Sith" - may well be too
    alarming for the youngest readers.

    Harry still has his wry sense of humor and a plucky boyish heart, but
    as in the last volume ([4]"Harry Potter and the Order of the
    Phoenix"), he is more Henry V than Prince Hal, more King Arthur than
    the young Wart. He has emerged, at school and on the Quidditch field,
    as an unquestioned leader: someone who must learn to make unpopular
    decisions and control his impetuous temper, someone who must keep
    certain secrets from his schoolmates and teachers.

    He has become more aware than ever of what he and Voldemort have in
    common - from orphaned childhoods to an ability to talk Parseltongue
    (i.e., snake speech) to the possession of matching wands - and in one
    chilling scene, he is forced to choose between duty to his mission and
    his most heartfelt emotions. In discovering the true identity of the
    Half-Blood Prince, Harry will learn to re-evaluate the value of first
    impressions and the possibility that his elders' convictions can blind
    them to parlous truths. And in embracing his own identity, he will
    discover his place in history.

    As in earlier volumes, Ms. Rowling moves Harry's story forward by
    chronicling his adventures at Hogwarts, while simultaneously moving
    backward in time through the use of flashbacks (via Dumbledore's
    remarkable Pensieve, a receptacle for people's memories). As a result,
    this is a coming-of-age story that chronicles the hero's evolution not
    only by showing his maturation through a series of grueling tests, but
    also by detailing the growing emotional wisdom he gains from
    understanding more and more about the past.

    In addition to being a bildungsroman, of course, the Harry Potter
    books are also detective stories, quest narratives, moral fables,
    boarding school tales and action-adventure thrill rides, and Ms.
    Rowling uses her tireless gift for invention to thread these genres
    together, while at the same time taking myriad references and tropes
    (borrowed from such disparate sources as Shakespeare, Dickens, fairy
    tales, Greek myths and more recent works like "Star Wars") and making
    them her own.

    Perhaps because of its position as the penultimate installment of a
    seven-book series, "The Half-Blood Prince" suffers, at moments, from
    an excess of exposition. Some of Dumbledore's speeches to Harry have a
    forced, summing-up quality, and the reader can occasionally feel Ms.
    Rowling methodically setting the stage for developments to come or
    fleshing out scenarios put in play by earlier volumes (most notably,
    [5]"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," with its revelations
    about the young Voldemort, a k a Tom Riddle).

    Such passages, however, are easily forgotten, as the plot hurtles
    along, gaining a terrible momentum in this volume's closing pages. At
    the same time, the suspense generated by these books does not stem
    solely from the tension of wondering who will die next or how one or
    another mystery will be solved. It stems, as well, from Ms. Rowling's
    dexterity in creating a character-driven tale, a story in which a
    person's choices determine the map of his or her life - a story that
    creates a hunger to know more about these people who have become so
    palpably real.

    We want to know more about Harry's parents - how they met and married
    and died - because that may tell us more about Harry's own yearnings
    and decisions. We want to know more about Dumbledore's desire to
    believe the best of everyone because that may shed light on whom he
    chooses to trust. We want to know more about the circumstances of Tom
    Riddle's birth because that may shed light on his decision to reinvent
    himself as Lord Voldemort.

    Indeed, the achievement of the Potter books is the same as that of the
    great classics of children's literature, from the Oz novels to "The
    Lord of the Rings": the creation of a richly imagined and utterly
    singular world, as detailed, as improbable and as mortal as our own.

--------------------

New 'Harry Potter' Packs a Punch
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Harry-Potter-Review.html

    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 12:20 a.m. ET

    NEW YORK (AP) -- A word of caution to all those hard-core fans about
    to dive into the latest adventures of Harry Potter: There will be
    tears. Yours.

    It's odd to think of the next-to-last Potter book as being a turning
    point but, in so many ways, that's the truth about ''Harry Potter and
    the Half-Blood Prince.'' J.K. Rowling's hero is no longer a boy
    wizard; he's a young man, determined to seek out and face a young
    man's challenges.

    Veteran Potter readers shouldn't worry about outgrowing the series,
    but younger fans may find that it has grown up too much.

    All ages, however, should be assured: Rowling's latest has lost none
    of the charm, intelligence and hilarity that have catapulted her
    series into publishing history. But this book also has a poignancy,
    complexity and sadness we probably couldn't have imagined when we
    started reading the first one. There's an emotional punch you won't
    believe.

    When Book 5, ''Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,'' ended, we
    learned what made the evil wizard Lord Voldemort kill Harry's parents
    and try to kill him as an infant -- a prophecy that said Harry could
    vanquish him, and that one of them would have to kill the other in
    order to survive.

    The wizarding world Rowling returns us to in Book 6 is a scarier
    place, even though only a few weeks have passed. Thanks to Harry and
    friends, the entire magical community knows that Voldemort is back.
    And how. He and his Death Eater followers have unleashed so much
    violence and murder that even the head of the non-magical world has to
    be told about it.

    Sooner than in her previous books, the action shifts Harry away from
    his awful relatives, the Dursleys, and right back to friends Ron and
    Hermione and all the others at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and
    Wizardry. As usual, there are new faces -- the new teacher of Defense
    against the Dark Arts gives Harry some serious concerns.

    As sixth-year students, Harry and company have moved on from the
    magical basics into more complicated studies, preparing for their
    after-school careers. But it's not just the work that's gotten more
    complicated, it's everything. Friendships change, love arrives (this,
    thank goodness, should FINALLY end all those Internet fan site
    arguments about who is going to hook up with whom) and Harry learns a
    lot about his enemy -- about his past, and about a potential weakness.

    We also learn about Harry, about the man he is turning into, his
    character and his strength of will.

    But it wouldn't be Hogwarts without strangeness and mystery. Harry has
    his suspicions about who's trying to do what, and it all erupts in the
    end. Rowling shows off her mastery, leading us down a path with
    certain clues and still managing to blindside us about who turns on
    whom and who doesn't.

    And, yes, there is another MAJOR death. Seriously major. Break out the
    tissues. No matter how well you think you know these books, don't
    assume you really know who anyone is, or what they are and aren't
    capable of.

    This is a powerful, unforgettable setup for the finale. The hardest
    thing about ''Half-Blood Prince'' is where it leaves us -- in mourning
    for who has been lost, anxious to learn how Rowling will wrap up a
    saga that millions wish would go on and on.

    On the Net:
    [3]http://www.scholastic.com
    [4]http://www.jkrowling.com

------------------------

Harry Potter: A Dissent (2 Letters)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/16/opinion/l16potter.html

    To the Editor:

    With the latest Harry Potter release ("Harry Potter and the
    Half-Crazed Summer Camper," Arts pages, July 14), is there room for a
    dissenting voice?

    My 10-year-old son announced his intention never to read another Harry
    Potter book. "Because, Mom, haven't you noticed? It's the same old
    thing. Harry Potter falls in trouble, Harry Potter learns a spell. It
    gets so boring."

    Could I believe my ears? My son, a good reader, at last! And I
    recalled (silently) a favorite quote from Vladimir Nabokov: "Caress
    the details," he directed. "Read for the tingle, the shiver up the
    spine."

    When my son deposited his hardcover Potter collection in his school's
    donation box, he assured me: "I don't want to keep these. They're not
    the kind of books you read twice." Well, I asked, what kind of book do
    you read again? "One with details," he answered. Sorry, J. K.
    Rowling...

    Kate Roth
    New York, July 14, 2005

    To the Editor:

    The editor who passed on Harry Potter ("The Editor's Tale," by John
    Kenney, Op-Ed, July 14) missed his true calling in life: he could
    obviously have a bright future as a country music lyricist. I presume
    his dog also left him?

    Bryan F. Erickson
    Eagan, Minn., July 14, 2005

--------------

New Harry Potter Book Getting Rave Reviews
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Harry-Potter.html?pagewanted=print

    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

    Filed at 5:40 p.m. ET

    NEW YORK (AP) -- After all the hype and midnight madness, ''Harry
    Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'' is proving as much an event to read
    as to buy.

    Critics are calling it the most moving and mature of J.K. Rowling's
    fantasy series. The New York Times compared it favorably to ''The Lord
    of the Rings,'' and the Los Angeles Times to ''Charlotte's Web.'' The
    AP's Deepti Hajela called it a ''powerful, unforgettable setup for the
    finale,'' Book VII, when the great Potter ride is expected to end.

    ''It'll be very sad when she finishes writing the books,'' said Agnes
    Jang, 16, a resident of Sydney, Australia, who came out Friday night
    dressed head-to-toe as a student of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
    and Wizardry.

    ''But Harry has to move on.''

    With a major character dying, tears may well break out around the
    globe over the next few days, but the age of Potter VI dawned at
    midnight Saturday with millions of smiles and a bit of a wink from
    Rowling. In Edinburgh, Scotland, the author emerged from behind a
    secret panel inside the city's medieval castle, settled into a leather
    easy chair and read an excerpt from the sixth chapter to a
    super-select group of 70 children from around the world.

    ''You get a lot of answers in this book,'' Rowling, a resident of
    Edinburgh, said as she arrived at the castle before thousands of
    adoring fans. ''I can't wait for everyone to read it.''

    It was party time for Potter lovers. Elisabeth Grant-Gibson, co-owner
    of ''Windows a Bookshop'' in Monroe, La., said they did more than
    double a normal good day's business. The first copy went to
    10-year-old Chloe Kaczvinsky, whose parents drove 30 miles to attend
    the store's Harry Potter Pajama Party.

    Her mother read the first chapter aloud during the ride home, and the
    second at home. Then her parents went to sleep. ''I asked Mom if I
    could read the book in bed. I stayed up to 5 and woke up at 8,'' Chloe
    said.

    In London, events were muted by the July 7 subway and bus bombings,
    which killed some 50 people. Book and magazine chain WH Smith scrapped
    a planned midnight launch at King's Cross Station, from whose
    fictional Platform 9 3/4 Harry catches the train to Hogwarts at the
    start of each term. The deadliest of the day's four attacks was on a
    subway near King's Cross.

    Still, hundreds of thousands of fans turned out to purchase Potter.

    In Dallas, about 200 of the faithful waited in the dark, mingling in
    an unlit parking lot, after storms knocked out power at a Barnes &
    Noble store. White horses posing as unicorns paraded down the main
    street of Wilmington, Ohio, where Books 'N' More quickly sold hundreds
    of Potters.

    Since Rowling first introduced Harry and his fellow students at
    Hogwarts to the world in 1997, the books have become a global
    phenomenon, selling 270 million copies in 62 languages and inspiring a
    series of movies. Rowling is now the richest woman in Britain, with a
    fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $1 billion.

    With only brief interruptions, ''Half-Blood Prince'' has topped the
    charts of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com since last December, when
    Rowling announced that she had completed it. Pre-orders worldwide were
    in the millions and even the audio book has been keeping pace with
    such blockbusters as Dan Brown's ''The Da Vinci Code'' and David
    McCullough's ''1776.''

    The biggest glitch happened in Canada, where publisher Raincoast
    sought a court injunction after a Vancouver store accidentally sold 14
    copies last week. A judge ordered customers not to discuss the book,
    copy it, sell it or read it before its release.

    The biggest gripes came in the U.S., not from critics, but from
    booksellers and environmentalists. Independent retailers were upset
    with Scholastic for selling the book on its web site at a 20 percent
    discount, more than many stores can afford. Environmentalists,
    meanwhile, were unhappy that Scholastic, unlike Raincoast, doesn't
    print the books on 100 percent recycled paper.

    ''We have some magic up our sleeves too,'' reads a message posted on
    the Web site of Greenpeace, ''a link to the Canadian publisher of
    `Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince,' who can send you a
    tree-friendly version of this popular book.''

    ------

    AP reporters Jill Lawless, Cassandra Vinograd and Sarah Blaskovich in
    London; Catherine McAloon in Edinburgh, Scotland; and Meraiah Foley in
    Sydney, Australia contributed to this report.

    On the Net:

    [3]http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com
    [4]http://www.scholastic.com
    [5]http://www.harrypotter.com
    [6]http://www.jkrowling.com
    [7]http://www.greenpeace.org

    4. http://www.scholastic.com/
    5. http://www.harrypotter.com/

--------------

Review: New 'Harry Potter' Packs a Punch
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Harry-Potter-Review.html?pagewanted=print

    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 12:20 a.m. ET

    NEW YORK (AP) -- A word of caution to all those hard-core fans about
    to dive into the latest adventures of Harry Potter: There will be
    tears. Yours.

    It's odd to think of the next-to-last Potter book as being a turning
    point but, in so many ways, that's the truth about ''Harry Potter and
    the Half-Blood Prince.'' J.K. Rowling's hero is no longer a boy
    wizard; he's a young man, determined to seek out and face a young
    man's challenges.

    Veteran Potter readers shouldn't worry about outgrowing the series,
    but younger fans may find that it has grown up too much.

    All ages, however, should be assured: Rowling's latest has lost none
    of the charm, intelligence and hilarity that have catapulted her
    series into publishing history. But this book also has a poignancy,
    complexity and sadness we probably couldn't have imagined when we
    started reading the first one. There's an emotional punch you won't
    believe.

    When Book 5, ''Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,'' ended, we
    learned what made the evil wizard Lord Voldemort kill Harry's parents
    and try to kill him as an infant -- a prophecy that said Harry could
    vanquish him, and that one of them would have to kill the other in
    order to survive.

    The wizarding world Rowling returns us to in Book 6 is a scarier
    place, even though only a few weeks have passed. Thanks to Harry and
    friends, the entire magical community knows that Voldemort is back.
    And how. He and his Death Eater followers have unleashed so much
    violence and murder that even the head of the non-magical world has to
    be told about it.

    Sooner than in her previous books, the action shifts Harry away from
    his awful relatives, the Dursleys, and right back to friends Ron and
    Hermione and all the others at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and
    Wizardry. As usual, there are new faces -- the new teacher of Defense
    against the Dark Arts gives Harry some serious concerns.

    As sixth-year students, Harry and company have moved on from the
    magical basics into more complicated studies, preparing for their
    after-school careers. But it's not just the work that's gotten more
    complicated, it's everything. Friendships change, love arrives (this,
    thank goodness, should FINALLY end all those Internet fan site
    arguments about who is going to hook up with whom) and Harry learns a
    lot about his enemy -- about his past, and about a potential weakness.

    We also learn about Harry, about the man he is turning into, his
    character and his strength of will.

    But it wouldn't be Hogwarts without strangeness and mystery. Harry has
    his suspicions about who's trying to do what, and it all erupts in the
    end. Rowling shows off her mastery, leading us down a path with
    certain clues and still managing to blindside us about who turns on
    whom and who doesn't.

    And, yes, there is another MAJOR death. Seriously major. Break out the
    tissues. No matter how well you think you know these books, don't
    assume you really know who anyone is, or what they are and aren't
    capable of.

    This is a powerful, unforgettable setup for the finale. The hardest
    thing about ''Half-Blood Prince'' is where it leaves us -- in mourning
    for who has been lost, anxious to learn how Rowling will wrap up a
    saga that millions wish would go on and on.

------------------

Growing Up With Harry Potter
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Growing-up-With-Harry.html

    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Filed at 2:28 a.m. ET

    RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- I was beginning to worry that my 12-year-old
    daughter might have outgrown Harry Potter -- or at least the
    excitement of Harry.

    When ''The Order of the Phoenix'' came out two years ago, Miana
    insisted we pre-order three months in advance. She begged my wife,
    Linda, to sew her a black Hogwarts robe, and we spent hours whittling
    her a wand -- with a whisker from our cat, Bear, as its ''magical
    core.'' We spent three hours at Borders playing games, doing
    face-painting and waiting in line to be one of the first with a book.

    But as Saturday's midnight release of ''The Half-Blood Prince''
    approached, Miana, now a rising seventh grader, wasn't even sure she
    wanted to deal with all that. Two years and 26 days was a long time to
    be away from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, so we'd had
    to find other ways to feed our fantasy.

    Miana started with Eoin Colfer's ''Artemis Fowl'' series, with its
    fairies, goblins and pixies. Then we introduced her to J.R.R.
    Tolkien's ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy -- an epic tale of good and
    bad wizards, of dragons and trolls and goblins and elves, and of a
    resurgent ''dark lord.''

    It was the perfect parallel to Potter, and Miana ate it up. For
    months, she could talk of nothing but enchanted rings, magic swords
    and elvish runes, and she seemed to have little time for Harry and his
    friends.

    Her Hogwarts robe sat balled up in a corner of her closet, wrinkled
    and forgotten.

    Then, about three weeks ago, she asked if I could call Borders and see
    what they had planned for this year. When I told her the clerk had
    promised ''crazy, crazy fun,'' she asked if we could sign up.

    Miana began marking the passage of time in weeks or days ''TH'' --
    'til Harry. On Thursday, Miana called me at work to finalize our
    plans, which by now included her two best friends, Katie and Amanda.

    ''I hope I can sleep tonight,'' she said. ''Maybe I should take a
    Benadryl.''

    She did. But, in our defense, she DID have a stuffy nose.

    Friday morning, I jumped in the car and drove to Borders to be there
    when they opened at 9 o'clock and get a low number for the line to
    pick up our book at midnight. When I returned home, Miana and Linda
    were waiting at the door.

    ''What number did we get?'' Miana asked.

    ''They said we'd have to come back later,'' I said. ''But I have a
    couple of surprises to tide you over.''

    I made a big show of pulling out a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor
    beans (with new flavors rotten egg and bacon), a chocolate frog
    complete with wizard trading card and ... a purple ticket with the
    number ''0001.''

    Miana danced around the kitchen chanting, ''We're No. 1! We're No.
    1!''

    She and her friends exchanged phone calls throughout the day to confer
    on wardrobes and hairstyles. Katie, with her beautiful red hair and a
    black graduation robe from Goodwill, would be Ginny Weasley. Amanda,
    with a purple robe and her hair dyed raven-black, would be Harry's
    crush, Cho Chang.

    Linda had spent the evening before braiding Miana's hair to achieve
    that Hermione Granger frizziness.

    ''I'm hyper, I'm hyper,'' Miana said, bouncing up and down. ''Today
    can't go by fast enough!''

    But when we got to the store around 9:30 p.m., the girls were already
    wondering whether they'd made a mistake dressing up. So few seemed to
    be in costume this year.

    As the minutes ticked by toward midnight, the three sat in a corner of
    the bookstore, eating oversized chocolate chip cookies and thumbing
    through a stack of J-14 and Tiger Beat magazines for the latest gossip
    on Orlando Bloom and Lindsay Lohan. Their minds seemed to be on
    anything but a boy with a lightning scar on his forehead.

    ''Am I having fun yet?'' Miana asked with that look of ennui that only
    a tween can muster. ''Because if I am, my face hasn't caught up with
    my brain.''

    Maybe we just should've gone to Wal-Mart at midnight and dispensed
    with all the hoopla. Twelve suddenly seemed much too old for
    face-painting and hat-making.

    Then the store manager announced it was time to line up.

    ''Well,'' Miana said, giving me a shove. ''Get in line, buddy.'' Soon
    she had grabbed my cell phone and was counting down the minutes.

    At 11:55, Linda turned to me with a sad expression on her face.

    ''I'm already dreading the day when we finish the book,'' she said.
    ''Because then it will be over again.''

    ''Are you going to cry?'' Miana asked with a look that said, ''You'd
    better not.''

    When the manager announced at 11:58 that the books were being brought
    up to the registers, Miana was up on her tiptoes dancing a jig.

    ''It's 12 o'clock, it's 12 o'clock, it's 12 o'clock,'' she said,
    handing me back the phone. ''Get your ticket.''

    A couple of minutes later, Miana was leaving the store, the new book
    clutched tightly to her chest. As we drove home under a brilliant
    yellow half moon, we listened to the book on compact disc.

    The three girls who just a few hours earlier couldn't have cared less
    about witches and warlocks sat transfixed in the back seat, not
    uttering a word.

    ------

    EDITOR'S NOTE: Allen G. Breed is the AP's Southeast regional writer,
    based in Raleigh.

--------------

Rowling Promises Answers in Potter Book
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Harry-Potter-Castle.html

    July 15, 2005
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

    Filed at 10:37 p.m. ET

    EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) -- As midnight drew near, Harry Potter's
    creator arrived at the glowering medieval castle, prepared to crack
    open the next adventure the world has been waiting for.

    J.K. Rowling refused to give away plot details from ''Harry Potter and
    the Half-Blood Prince'' as she walked the red carpet Friday outside
    Edinburgh castle, where thousands of fans eagerly waited to watch her
    read on large video screens.

    ''You get a lot of answers in this book,'' Rowling said. ''I can't
    wait for everyone to read it.''

    Seventy lucky young fans from around the world were spirited in
    carriages up cobbled streets into the 11th-century fortress, which was
    illuminated with neon lights and blazing torches. The carriages were
    drawn by black and white horses adorned with ostrich plumes, and
    driven by coachmen wearing capes and black top hats.

    Inside, lantern-bearing prefects led the 70 to the Queen Anne
    building, transformed for the evening into the entrance hall of
    Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

    When the clock struck 12, Rowling emerged from behind a secret panel,
    settled into a leather easy chair and read an excerpt from the sixth
    chapter to the spellbound group. After the brief reading, the children
    erupted in screams and applause.

    The 70 won competitions to report on the book launch for their local
    newspapers. The fans outside were drawn from schools here in the
    Scottish capital, where the 39-year-old Rowling lives.

    Along with her best friend, Minnie Mass, an 18 year old from Miami,
    Florida, found her way to the launch party through hard work. They
    weren't competition winners, but were allowed inside the castle after
    lining up for several hours and stopping Rowling for a chat as she
    made her way down the red carpet.

    ''We are waitresses in Miami Beach. We worked for a year to get over
    here. We came last night and we are leaving tomorrow,'' said Mass, who
    is originally from Parana, Brazil.

    She said Harry Potter was the first book she read in English after
    learning the language in the United States: ''I told (Rowling) it was
    the first book I read in English and she was really touched.''

    Chelsea Kennedy, 16, from Toronto, Canada, had only one criticism of
    the extravaganza.

    ''I wished it had been longer,'' she said.

---------------------

Potter Fans, it's worth it to be harried.
Newsday, July 15, 2005
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nyhen154344021jul15,0,5037324,print.column?coll=ny-news-columnists

Hours ahead of schedule, I can now reveal the shocking contents of "Harry 
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

Get ready now, you Muggles (that's Potter-talk for people without magical 
powers).

If you aren't prepared to hear the latest adventures of the world's most 
beloved boy wizard with the lightning-bolt scar - well, you'd probably 
better stop reading right here.

Wait! Only kidding!

I don't really have the new Potter book, which is set for formal release 
right after midnight.

I just thought it might be fun to watch those ghoulish enforcers at the 
Scholastic book division go totally bonkers when they heard that someone 
had blown their Embargo of Doom.

I'll bet those jittery publishing flacks are pressing the panic buttons 
right now, hyperventilating into their cell phones, interrogating innocent 
bookstore clerks, sending high-priced legal teams off in search of court 
injunctions - all to protect their precious 12:01 a.m. release.

Ha!

I got you this time - your own personal Lord Voldemort, casting evil 
spells on Harry's publishing-industry control freaks!

Now, I agree the Potter books are great. I love how the J.K. Rowling 
series has created such excitement for reading among the young.

Pretty much anything that gets the kids reading, I am fully in favor of. 
It could be recipes or mattress tags or cereal-box ingredient lists, for 
all I care. God knows we need something to yank the kiddies away the video 
games and the cable TV.

If it's the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I'll sing the 
fight song right now.

And these are real books with complex characters and rollicking plots. 
We've truly come a long way from "The Hardy Boys," the formulaic drivel 
that I was reading when I was Potter-age.

With 260 million sold, there's no denying the power of the Harry brand. 
The last one, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," was the fastest 
seller in U.S. publishing history, 5 million copies in the first 24 hours. 
The new one has gotten the grandest launch ever, 10.8 million up front.

All of which is very good reason for the Potter publishing zealots, and 
thoughtless Potter critics, to just chill out.

The critics first: Last time around, we had some fundamentalist Christian 
ministers throwing Harry Potter book-burnings. They complained that the 
boy wizard was teaching devil worship to America's innocent young. This 
was so absurd, it's hardly worth answering now, and thankfully we haven't 
heard much this time from the holy-roller-hate-Harry crowd.

Unfortunately, they've been replaced by the new pope.

Even before the new book appears, Pope Benedict XVI has already filed his 
series review. The Harry Potter books, he wrote, "distort Christianity in 
the soul."

The comments were made in a 2003 letter to German author (and previous 
Potter-basher) Gabriele Kuby, back when Benedict was still a cardinal.

"It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter because these are 
subtle seductions which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort 
Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly," he wrote from the 
Vatican, apparently forgetting that children for centuries have been 
delighted (not harmed) by fantasy and imagination.

But just as this kind of stuff is generating a broad Harry defense, his 
iron-fisted publishers risk soiling all the good feeling, just as the new 
book comes out.

Scholastic reps have been harrumphing about a handful of Potter leaks.

On Monday, a 9-year-old boy bought a copy from an Eckerd's drugstore in 
Kingston, N.Y. Conscience-stricken, he returned the book after reading 
just two pages.

And two Indianapolis men snagged a copy from a downtown bookstore.

"I thought I was seeing things," Tim Meyer told the Indianapolis Star. "I 
asked the lady, 'Can I buy this now?' and she was like 'Yeah' and just 
rang it up." Meyer's already on Chapter 18, he said, pronouncing the book 
a fast read. "What J.K. Rowling is telling you is pretty shocking, 
considering the last five books."

So what can you say? You can say it's even worse in Canada. The Canadian 
distributor, Raincoast Books, was so upset when a store outside Vancouver 
mistakenly sold 20 copies, the distributor got a gag order from the 
British Columbia Supreme Court, forbidding buyers from revealing the plot.

No American courts have issued pre-publication prior-restraint orders yet 
in defense of the big-dollar PR campaign. But as I mentioned, we - and 
Harry - still have a few hours to go.


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