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1、Unit3Leisure without literature is death and burial alive. Seneca, Roman philosopherWhy Harrys Hot?1.J. K. Rowling swears she never saw it coming. In her wildest dreams, she didnt think her Harry Potter books would appeal to more than a handful of readers. “I never expected a lot of people to like t
2、hem,“ she insisted in a recent interview. “Well, it turned out I was very wrong, obviously. It strikes a chord with an enormous number of people.“ Thats putting it mildly. With 35 million copies in print, in 35 languages, the first three Harry Potter books have earned a conservatively estimated $480
3、 million in three years. And that was just the warm- up. With a first printing of 5.3 million copies and advance orders topping 1.8 million, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth installment of the series, promises to break every bookselling record. Jack Morrissey, 12, plainly speaks for a
4、 generation of readers when he says, “The Harry Potter books are like life, but better.“2.Amazingly, Rowling keeps her several plotlines clear of each other until the end, when he deftly brings everything together in a cataclysmic conclusion. For pure narrative power, this is the best Potter book ye
5、t.3.When the book finally went on sale at 12:01 am. Saturday, thousands of children in Britain and North America rushed to claim their copies. Bookstores hosted pajama parties, hired magicians and served cookies and punch, but nobody needed to lift the spirits of these crowds. In one case, customers
6、 made such a big, happy noise that neighbors called the cops. At a Borders in Charlotte, N.C., Erin Rankin, 12, quickly thumbed to the back as soon as she got her copy. “I heard that a_ major character dies, and I really want to find out who,“ she said. But minutes later she gave up. “I just cant do
7、 it. I cant read the end first.“4.The only sour note in all the songs of joy over this phenomenon has come from some parents and conservative religious leaders who say Rowling advocates witchcraft. reading of the books has been challenged in 25 school districts in at least 17 states, and the books h
8、ave been banned in schools in Kansas and Colorado. But thats nothing new, says Michael Patrick Hearn, a childrens book scholar and editor of The Annotated Wizard, of Oz. “Any kind of magic is considered evil by some people,“ he says. “The Wizard of Oz was attacked by fundamentalists in the mid-1980s
9、.“5.But perhaps the most curious thing about the Potter phenomenon, especially given that it is all about books, is that almost no one has taken the time to say how good or badthese books are. The other day my 11-year-old daughter asked me if I thought Harry Potter was a classic. I gave her, Im afra
10、id, one of those adult-sounding answers when I said, “Time will tell.“ This was not an outright lie. Theres no telling which books will survive from one generation to the next. But the fact is, I was hedging. What my daughter really wanted to know was how well J. K. Rowling stacks up against the lik
11、es of Robert Louis Stevenson or Madeleine LEngle.6.I could have told her that I thought they were beautifully crafted works of entertainment, the literary equivalent of Steven Spielberg. I could also have told her I thought the Potter books were derivative. They share so many elements with so many c
12、hildrens classics that sometimes it seems as though Rowling had assembled her novels from a kit. However, these novels amount to, much more than just the sum of their parts. The crucial aspect of their appeal is that they can be read by children and adults with equal pleasure. Only the best authorsa
13、nd they can be as different as Dr. Seuss and Philip Pullman“ and, yes, J.|K. Rowlingcan pull that off.7.P. L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, put it best when she wrote, “You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, forif you a
14、re honest you have, in fact, no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one. There is plenty for children and adults to enjoy in Rowlings books, starting with their language. Her prose may be unadorned, but her way with naming people and things reveals a quirky and o
15、riginal talent.8.The best writers remember what it is like to be a child with astonishing intensity. Time and again, Rowling articulates just how defenseless even the bravest children often feel. Near the end of the second book Dumbledore, the wise and protective headmaster, is banished from Hogwart
16、s. This terrifies Harry and his schoolmates“With Dumbledore gone, fear had spread as never before“and it terrified me. And in all of Rowlings books there runs an undercurrent of sadness and loss. In the first book the orphaned Harry stares into the Mirror of Erised, which shows the viewer his or her utmost desires. Harry sees his dead parents. “Not until Id reread what Id written did I realize that that had been ta
