Harry Potter: A Fascinating, Never-Ending Phenomenon

I’m one of the few people who have not read a Harry Potter book, and I haven’t seen any of the movies, either. However, I have been fascinated by the phenomenon of the books, and of the personal story and success of J.K. Rowling, since 1998, when I read one of the early reviews of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, written by my friend and former USA TODAY colleague Cathy Hainer, a year before Cathy died of breast cancer. I continued to read a lot about Rowling and the books over the years, and enjoyed the opportunity to do reference questions at USAT about Rowling, especially when the series-ending Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published in 2007. So it was interesting to read about The Harry Potter Alliance, which had escaped my attention until now, in Deborah Netburn’s July 20 Los Angeles Times feature story Finding lessons for life in Harry Potter books. Netburn interviews the nonprofit alliance’s director, Andrew Slack, about the good work being done in the cause of social justice, inspired by Rowling’s messages. “Slack’s organization uses parallels from the Potter books,” Netburn writes, “to educate and mobilize Potter fans around such issues as workers’ rights and combating genocide.” What is further fascinating to me is that Slack describes himself as a “Harry Potter rabbi.” There is more on the alliance recently in the July 16 CNN report For some fans, lessons of ‘Potter’ carry over into real world and July 14 on Newsweek.com, How Crazy Are Harry Potter Fans? Perhaps one day I’ll start reading a Potter book, but in the meantime, reading about the world and community that has been built around Rowling and her books remains enough for me.