From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1999 17:39:03 -0600

While others ponder the characteristics of Roger Sutton's term
"arbitrary magic," I find myself thinking about the pleasure of reading the first Harry book aloud. It was when I did read it aloud to an eight-year-old last summer that I began to marvel at J.K. Rowling's brilliance as a writer. Not because the child was rapt, but because I began to notice elements in the writing that sometimes just stunned me.

Try it. Read a chapter of this first book aloud. No fair reading only a page aloud. Notice how Rowling's phrasing expresses meaning, not to mention suggesting where one can catch a breath. Observe how her little inventions, surprises, and humor arrive with a perfect pace. She's practially scripted her story for the sound of the language and her word choices. Sometimes that which appears to be easy - maybe even lowbrow fantasy - is far more complex in the construction than it first appears to be.

My observation is not about a type of fantasy or elements of fantasy. It's about a brilliantly written first novel or the first published portion of a long seven-part story. Perhaps it's easy to miss how very good her writing is.

Ginny Moore Kruse (gmkruse at ccbc.education.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center (www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/) A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin Madison
Received on Tue 09 Nov 1999 05:39:03 PM CST