[HPforGrownups] Where JKR really stole her ideas from

[Kathleen Kelly MacMillan]

No: HPFGUIDX 9364

Here's the first part of a booktalk I use for promoting "Wizard's Hall" by 
Jane Yolen to students (I do the first part of this without showing them the 
book):

The next book I'm going to tell you about features a boy who is 11 years old, 
and he's going off to boarding school.  But it's not an ordinary boarding 
school--his is a school for wizards.  Before he went to this school, he never 
once thought that he might be a wizard.  But then he goes there, and meets new 
friends, and has adventures.  He even faces the most evil wizard there is, a 
wizard so evil no other wizard wants to say his name out loud.  (Of course, by 
this point, the kids are all looking at me like I'm totally out of it, and 
muttering "Harry Potter, duh!"  So then I say...)  The boy's name is Henry and 
his school is called Wizard's Hall...


Gets a reaction anyway.  (Though Henry is more Neville Longbottom than Harry 
Potter, and HP is definitely the better book, but then I'm not biased or 
anything!)


Oh, and my other thought:  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was flying long before the 
Weasleys' flying Ford Anglia.


Kathy