Re: reading is not always recovery

Zebee Johnstone wrote:
What I find fascinating is that there's a very big and creative
subculture around the Potter books. Heaps and heaps of world building
and looking for clues and references in the books.

I don't find that level of sheer energy and inventiveness in the other
book's fandoms.

John Burnham asked:
Yes, but what puzzles me is why does this series attract this degree of
attention ? Yes, it's quite enjoyable even if you do want to shake the

Zebee replied:
Because it's a world that you can play in. It has much more
interesting byways than Dark is Rising which has pretty much no
worldbuilding, no new things. It has quirky ideas, and reasonably
consistent rules, and lots of things alluded to that make people
wonder about how it works and what effect it has.

If you are a reader then it's fairly average. If you are the kind of
person who gets into worlds and writing and what if, then it's far
more than that.

I suspect that world-building in and around the books is largely what
does appeal to children with imagination. The Harry Potter [1] world is
unusually fertile ground. Depending on the age of the child, it makes
for a good basis for play, their own fantasy world, or just private
contemplation about the real world.

I would argue that we see a lot of the details of Rowling's fantasy
world, beyond the needs of the story, and the contact areas with
the real world are fairly well done -- for example, the money, the radio
and press, the Minister for Magic, the comparisons of football and
Quidditch, etc. There are gaps in the consistency, of course, but
they're not too obvious and/or can be ignored. [2]

It taps into the child's desire for a secret fantasy world that connects
to this one -- a more advanced equivalent of the fantasy friend. I
would argue that the Harry Potter world is unusual in that it is so
closely integrated to the real world -- most other children's fantasy
either occurs in a totally different world, or has the fantastic intrude
as an exceptional occurrence into this world.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which other posters were mentioning (and
which I do have on my shelf) comes close, but the connections aren't
nearly as common, the fantasy world is much less defined, and the
connections between the two worlds are murky, ill-defined, and very
uncommon. In Narnia, the comings and goings are limited, highly unusual,
and it's implied that they all happen at Aslan's nudging.

The Hogwarts Express leaves from one of London's main termini, from a
platform you can get to just by knowing the right place to walk. There
are other entrances hidden all around the UK and Europe. In the Harry
Potter world, the right child can enter at will.

It taps into the child's desire for Secret Powers. The magic system is
old hat, so to speak, but the concentration on the children learning it
is not that common.

And, of course, it *is* Britain in a different guise. Beyond the magic,
most of the world (especially in the early books) is thoroughly British
in its institutions and outlook, and in the way you have modern culture
interacting with medieval organisations that have modernised in their
own way, according to their own logic, and with historic structures and
attitudes that no-one has particularly bothered to update. [2]

This all means that a child is presented with a ready-made world, with
an internal logic that they can quickly grasp, and plenty of
opportunities to place themselves within it. And there are plenty of
options for whatever sort of adventure they want to imagine -- fighting
monsters, Quidditch, using magic on acquaintances...

James.

[1] I'm *not* going to call him HP on *this* group!

[2] How, exactly, does the magical economy *work*? Who produces the raw
materials? What do they trade with the non-magical world given that they
want to limit their involvement with it?

--
E-mail: james@ | "I don't think so," said René Descartes. Just then, he
aprilcottage.co.uk | vanished.
.

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