[HPforGrownups] Young Adult/Children's Literature

[Susanne]

No: HPFGUIDX 51226



Hi,

Thursday, January 30, 2003, 11:10:38 AM, heiditandy wrote:
>>From: karywick <karenwickersham at ameritech.net>
>> I'm sure JKR 
>> never thought they would be picked apart and critiqued as much as
>> we 
>> do on this web site or as much as some other literary classics
>> taught 
>> in colleges.

> No, I'm sure she didn't, although we know that at least while writing
> OoTP, she's aware that there are nitpicking websites out there. She's
> said so in interviews

I just read one of her interviews here:
http://www.ala.org/BookLinks/jkrowling.html

It's an old one, from July 1999, but I haven't sought out
many of her interviews before, so it's all new to me :)

I thought the following was kind of funny, considering what
we are doing on this list <g>.

************************************
JKR:
Only later can you start analyzing it. But you can
overanalyze, too. I had a woman tell me it was clear to her
that Harry was so abused that he becomes schizophrenic, and
that everything that happens from the point of the arrival
of the letters about Hogswart is his own escape into a sort
of torture-fantasy. I tried to be polite and say something
like, Well, that would be one way of looking at it, I
guess. But I was kind of scared. One of the nicest things
about writing for children is that you dont find them
deconstructing novels. Either they like it or they dont
like it.
************************

I'm not sure if it's exactly clear who she is writing for.
A lot of the interview sounds as if the target audience
*is* thought to be mostly children.

Especially the following from the same interview:

********************
Harry is my full-time job at the moment. I really dont
have much brain space to think about other projects. I dont
know if whatever comes next will be for children. But, if I
end up being a childrens writer, that will be fine for me,
because I dont at all see childrens literature as
substandard or adult books as a peak of achievement. But,
equally, if the next idea that enthused me this much were
for adults, then Id do that.
*********************

And *this* part has given me back the hope that there might
be a somewhat happy ending waiting for the readers:

*********************

Rowling: Yes, thats what Im trying to do with the books in
this series. They could be seen as an antidote to all of the
grim books. There has been the same trend in publishing in
Great Britain. Weve had a glut of very realistic, gritty,
very bleak books.
*********************

I'll have to go and see if she contradicts all this in later
interviews.

-- 
Best regards,
 Susanne                           mailto:siskiou at earthlink.net