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The
Author of Harry Potter Changed
the World
The author
of Harry Potter
is
one
of my heroes in the literary world and perhaps the
greatest fantasy writer of our time.
Real
name: Joanne Rowling
Pen name: JK Rowling
Born: 31 July 1965
From: Yate in
Gloucestershire, England
Notable works:
The Harry Potter series
JK Rowling changed
the world. And no, I don’t just mean the world she wrote about, the one Harry Potter
saved from the dark Lord
Voldemort.
I mean our world, the one in which we all live in - most of the time
anyway. The rest we spend in some fantasy realm flying with fairies and
fighting dragons, don’t we ;-)?!
Through
the Harry Potter
series,
which she famously came up with on a train from Manchester to London,
the author of Harry
Potter inspired
writers and artists, brought wonder, joy and magic to
millions and instilled a love of reading in children worldwide.
 I still remember the first time I picked up a
copy of Harry Potter
and
the Sorcerer’s Stone (Philosopher’s
Stone to me as I read it while living
in Europe). A few pages into it, I was hooked. I despised the Dursleys
and couldn’t wait to enter the magical world to which Harry belonged. I
waited with all the other fans for the next instalment and devoured
each sequel
as soon as it emerged.
In the ten
years between the publication
of The
Sorcerer’s Stone and The Deathly
Hallows, we Potter fans journeyed through the story-world
Rowling
created absorbing the wonder that spilled from every page. We
shared the joys, triumphs and traumas of the three main Harry Potter characters, Harry
Potter, Hermione
Granger
and Ron Weasley.
We trembled at Lord Voldemort in his various incarnations and howled at
the exploits of the Weasley
twins. We puzzled at the mysteries at the core of each novel and shook
our head in wonder as each secret was revealed. We read, we watched, we
wondered and we waited for more.
When the
author of Harry Potter
conjured up Harry Potter’s world, she unlocked the door to
magical
places like Hogwarts, Hogsmeade
and Diagon Alley
and gave us all a key. I
love how she made her characters leap
off the pages
into our
imagination, how she developed plots in a such a way that it was
impossible to predict the outcome, how she wrote with so much detail
that you felt present in every scene, how she made us all laugh, cry,
squirm and scream.
But
my very favorite thing about the author of the Harry Potter is the
way she took seemingly
irrelevant elements from one book and made them significant in
another. For example, we first heard of Sirius Black in Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer’s Stone (the first book in the series) but he didn't
become a significant part of the story-world until the Prisoner of
Azkaban (the third book).
 The
final book in the series from the author of Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows is a
masterpiece. Not a single word is wasted. Every chapter is a tight as
it can be. Rowling picked up all the loose
ends from the preceding
books and expertly wove them together into a
compelling and satisfying story.
When you read it, it’s easy to believe
her claim that she came up with the entire series before
she wrote the first book. What a mind to be able to conceive of and
contain so many character insights and plot twists. What a brilliant
mind!
Sadly
the author of Harry
Potter isn’t planning to write more fantasy books about
Potter, though she did release the storybook featured in The Deathly Hallows,
The Tales of
Beedle the Bard, and is
working on an encyclopedia
to give yet further insight into his world. I’m
sure that whatever she decides to pen in the future will be nothing
short of
amazing.
CLICK HERE
to read about the candy enjoyed by Rowling's teen characters, Bertie
Botts Every Flavor Beans
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the Author of Harry
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