Western kids consumed by Harry Potter rage

Western kids consumed by Harry Potter rage
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

WASHINGTON, JULY 8: Much of the English-speaking western world has been smitten beyond comprehension by a fictional character named Harry Potter.

The obsession reached hysterical levels on Friday midnight when multitudes of pre-teens, accompanied by parents, thronged book stores in Britain and the United States to greet the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth and latest in a series of books by the British author J K Rowling.

Publishing mavens have been comparing the event to a literary gold rush. No event in publishing history comes anywhere near matching the frenzy that has erupted over the last week in the run-up to the release of the 754-page book that most kids would find physically unwieldy. But having soaked up the previous three Harry Potters and elevated the teenage hero to cult status, they could not wait to catch up on the exploits of the orphan wizard.

So, by witching hour on Friday when the book was officially released across the world, a record 5.3 million copies of the book had been printed and shipped to meet what is already an unprecedented demand. Even before the book was released, online bookstores reported an order of nearly a million copies, including 400,000 bookings on the ubiquitous Amazon.com.

Some are calling Harry Potter Britain's greatest export since the Beatles.

True to expectations, screaming pre-teens mobbed bookstores to get their hands on the $ 29.95 book. Store employees wore maroon capes and witches hats as they handed out books to throngs of Muggles (non-magical human beings) about the orphan Harry and his life as a wizard in training. Many of the kids wore Harry Potter eyeglasses and lightning bolt tattoos on their forehead, a trademark of their hero.

Some kids began reading the book under car lights on the drive back home. Others stayed awake till the wee hours. Store owners swore they had never seen anything like this mania, not during the release of the Sony play station or Hannibal or Pokemon or Furby or Beanie baby.

Not the Y2K nor any eclipse generated such fever.

The book has been promoted so well that few know the latest plot. No reviews of the book have yet appeared. All that is known is that in Goblet, the orphaned Harry, now 14, continues to battle the evil Voldemart, the rogue wizard who killed his parents, while trying to pass his classes at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The book reportedly introduces a new threat: puberty.

There are already 30 million copies of the three earlier Harry Potter books in 33 languages around the globe. The books -- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban -- chronicle the pre-teen wizard-orphan Harry's life at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Some parents object to what they see as the glorification of wizardry, witchcraft and other matters that they consider evil.

But the kids have loved it. On the flip side, Rowling is credited with bringing back reading into children's lives. Many of them are tuning out television and the Internet to return to reading.

The combined sales of the Harry Potter books has made the 34-year-old Rowling -- once a single mom on welfare who had to write in cafes because she had neither heat nor babysitter -- the third richest woman in England. Recent magazines have named her Woman of the Year and called her one of the most powerful influences on children.

And this could just be the beginning. A movie based on the first book will start production next year in England. It is being produced by Warner Bros and directed by Chris Columbus (Home Alone).

Typically, the $ 1 billion deal involves tie-ups with 46 toy-makers for producing a range of Harry Potter merchandise.

Three more Harry Potter books will follow. Rowling, who thought up the series while sitting disconsolately in a train that was stuck in a tunnel, had envisioned seven books. Potter will be 17 when the last of them will be written.

Thanks to the craze for Harry Potter, the New York Times has announced it will create a bestseller's list for children's books, largely because for 81 weeks now, the Rowling books have been taking spaces that might otherwise go to adult works. The new list of 15 books starts July 23. Potter has even made it to the cover of Time magazine, which compared the series to J R R Tolkien's cult classic The Hobbit.