Stouffer to be on ABC News

[kdemcak at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 14740

>  Ms. Stouffer is to be on ABC Morning News giving her side of the 
Larry
> Potter Story.
> 
> dr

I saw this on Good Morning America today.  It was actually rather 
frustrating, as Diane Sawyer, who was interviewing Stouffer, had 
obviously not read the books and got some details about them wrong.

They showed the cover of the book "Larry Potter and His Best Friend 
Lilly" (Lilly Potter is apparently Larry's cousin).  It was done in a 
childish style and had a kid with brown hair and glasses and a little 
girl with pigtails.

They also had a chart of what Stouffer claims are similarities
between 
the books.  They brought up Harry/Larry, Lily/Lilly, Muggles/Muggles, 
orphaned kids, Keeper of the Keys/Keeper of the Gardens.  They also 
mentioned one I hadn't heard before: there is a character in her book 
called Nimbus who is some sort of sky god and then the Nimbus 2000 in 
HP.  And this is what REALLY got me mad: there is something in her 
book called Nevils which she says Neville Longbottom is a rip-off of.
 
uuugh...  (even worse -- "there is a creature in the Harry Potter 
books called Neville that is a half-wizard/half-human" -- Diane 
Sawyer).  Now *THAT* is stretching.

Frankly, she did not make a great case for herself, having nothing 
besides those similarities to go on, and most of them are huge 
stretches at best.  They brought up that Rowling hadn't been the US 
while the books were in print, and her reply was basically that she 
had been at a lot of trade shows with big displays of her characters 
and that Scholastic might have stolen the ideas and passed them along 
to Rowling.

They also showed a short clip of Rowling talking about how the idea 
came to her, fully formed.  And Stouffer claimed that she was the 
victim, that she is the one who is being sued, conveniently
forgetting 
to mention that she *is* suing them, too.


Cheers,
Katy