美国国家公共电台 NPR Inside The Ever-Expanding Wizarding World: Harry Potter At 20

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

It's hard to remember a world before "Harry¹ Potter." The children's book series is a juggernaut that spawned² a film series, a theme park, a Broadway play, a museum exhibit.

ROBERTA OLSON: You enter the portal to Hogwarts. We have Albus Dumbledore.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: At the New-York Historical Society, Roberta Olson is a curator of a new exhibit called "A History of Magic," which traces the roots of author J.K. Rowling's novels.

OLSON: So with all kinds of basilisks here, unbelievable objects. The sphinx you can touch.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The exhibit also marks 20 years since "Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone" was published in the United States. WEEKEND EDITION's books editor Barrie Hardymon has this look at the impact Harry Potter has had on what children read.

BARRIE HARDYMON, BYLINE³: Potterheads of all ages are milling about the exhibit, looking at bezoras, mandrakes, crystal balls. In addition to the magic, there's the more mundane⁴ spell work, Rowling's detailed⁵ plot diagrams and original drawings on napkins, a glowing review from an 8-year-old who was an early reader of the series. The reviews of the books haven't changed much in 20 years.

ADALIE TYAU: I just, like, like it because it's, like - it makes our world feel kind of boring. And it's, like, so creative, like, all the candy and Hogwarts and everything. So I really like it.

HARDYMON: Adalie Tyau considers herself a superfan.

ADALIE: I read all of them 11 times.

HARDYMON: She's 10. Twelve-year-old Kaitlyn Kruemmel has also read the series multiple times.

KAITLYN KRUEMMEL: They just are magical. And it's cool to think about all the different things, like, that aren't really happening. But you can imagine yourself there and having the experiences that the characters are.

HARDYMON: I ask every single person to tell me what else they've read that they enjoyed as much. And sure, the people that are from my generation say "Narnia" and "A Wrinkle In Time." And a lot of young people mention the "Percy Jackson" series. But every person tells me that the "Potter" books are unique. There's nothing else like them. They read and reread, pour over details and never really get over them.

ARTHUR LEVINE: It was the fact that he was me, even though I was not an orphan⁶. And I'm not English.

HARDYMON: Arthur Levine is the editor who's responsible for bringing "Harry Potter" to the United States. We're in his office at Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint⁷ of the publishing giant Scholastic⁸. And he's telling the story of how he fell in love with the book.

LEVINE: What I could relate to so strongly was this idea that maybe there's something inside of you that nobody else can see.

HARDYMON: He knew that it was the kind of story that speaks very particularly to children, that makes everybody feel seen.

LEVINE: The idea of hidden identities and the goodness and rightness of who you are is not necessarily mirrored in society. I mean, this is a theme running through "Harry Potter." It would have been a huge thing in my life as a little gay kid growing up. And there isn't much that is explicitly⁹ gay in "Harry Potter."

HARDYMON: Levine knew at the time he was taking a risk on an unknown author in a genre¹⁰ that wasn't selling that well.

LEVINE: There was no market for hardcover children's fiction. Fantasy was not a hot, sexy thing.

HARDYMON: It paid off. At this moment, half a billion "Harry Potter" books have now been sold. But it was barrier-breaking in other ways, too. It was a book that both adults and kids could talk about at dinner. Levine says he got letters from kids with dyslexia, kids who had trouble reading, who realized for the first time that they could read and love a 700-page book.

LEVINE: Everybody wanted that next book. It wasn't just, like, the two nerdy readers in, you know, the class. It was the whole class.

HARDYMON: It appealed to a huge variety of readers. But it didn't reflect every reader. The three main characters in the books are white. And the experience of the British boarding school, magic or not, is a fairly narrow one. Levine acknowledges this but says that what the series did do was create a whole new generation of readers of all backgrounds who would go on to become writers and editors themselves.

LEVINE: All of my editors now were people who had grown up loving "Harry Potter." And that love sparked this idea. I want to make books.

KAIT FELDMANN: I connected the friendship. I love that there is a thread of very young people having the power to make a difference. And that was my end.

HARDYMON: Kait Feldmann is one of those editors. She's 26. She grew up reading the "Harry Potter" books. And now she works with Levine, shaping the next generation of children's books to reflect a wider variety of identities.

FELDMANN: You know, I definitely as a girl and as a Chinese girl growing up didn't always see that direct experience of mine reflected in books. And that's definitely something I want to see open up in the world.

HARDYMON: But the industry, as a whole, still has a long way to go.

KATHLEEN HORNING: The story is that things really haven't changed in the last 20 years.

HARDYMON: Librarian Kathleen Horning is the director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin. She says fewer than 10 percent of books feature characters of color or are written by non-white authors. And there's not a lot of variety in those books, she says. There are often historical narratives¹¹ about slavery or civil rights.

HORNING: What we don't see a lot of with diversity are books like "Harry Potter" that are just pure fantasy. And, in fact, those are the kind of books that African-American children, for example, really are clamoring for.

HARDYMON: But Horning is hopeful. And just over the last couple of years, there have been some breakout titles, like, last year's "Dread¹² Nation" by Justina Ireland, the "Akata Witch" series by Nnedi Okorafor and "Children Of Blood And Bone" By Tomi Adeyemi.

KAITYLN: I've read, like, other books about magic that are kind of similar but in a different way.

HARDYMON: Back at the "History Of Magic" exhibit Kaitlyn Kruemmel, at age 12, is still heavily invested in her love of "Harry Potter," but she's also branching out.

KAITYLN: Like, "Children Of Blood And Bone" - that's a new, good book. And it's about magic in the same way and younger people. Yeah.

HARDYMON: Barrie Hardymon, NPR News.

1 harry   

vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼

参考例句：

• Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天，人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
• Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。

2 spawned   

（鱼、蛙等）大量产（卵）( spawn的过去式和过去分词 )； 大量生产

参考例句：

• The band's album spawned a string of hit singles. 这支乐队的专辑繁衍出一连串走红的单曲唱片。
• The computer industry has spawned a lot of new companies. 由于电脑工业的发展，许多新公司纷纷成立。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 mundane   

adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的

参考例句：

• I hope I can get an interesting job and not something mundane.我希望我可以得到的是一份有趣的工作，而不是一份平凡无奇的。
• I find it humorous sometimes that even the most mundane occurrences can have an impact on our awareness.我发现生活有时挺诙谐的，即使是最平凡的事情也能影响我们的感知。

5 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。

6 orphan   

n.孤儿；adj.无父母的

参考例句：

• He brought up the orphan and passed onto him his knowledge of medicine.他把一个孤儿养大，并且把自己的医术传给了他。
• The orphan had been reared in a convent by some good sisters.这个孤儿在一所修道院里被几个好心的修女带大。

7 imprint   

n.印痕，痕迹；深刻的印象；vt.压印，牢记

参考例句：

• That dictionary is published under the Longman imprint.那本词典以朗曼公司的名义出版。
• Her speech left its imprint on me.她的演讲给我留下了深刻印象。

8 scholastic   

adj.学校的，学院的，学术上的

参考例句：

• There was a careful avoidance of the sensitive topic in the scholastic circles.学术界小心地避开那个敏感的话题。
• This would do harm to students' scholastic performance in the long run.这将对学生未来的学习成绩有害。

9 explicitly   

ad.明确地，显然地

参考例句：

• The plan does not explicitly endorse the private ownership of land. 该计划没有明确地支持土地私有制。
• SARA amended section 113 to provide explicitly for a right to contribution. 《最高基金修正与再授权法案》修正了第123条，清楚地规定了分配权。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

10 genre   

n.(文学、艺术等的)类型，体裁，风格

参考例句：

• My favorite music genre is blues.我最喜欢的音乐种类是布鲁斯音乐。
• Superficially,this Shakespeare's work seems to fit into the same genre.从表面上看， 莎士比亚的这个剧本似乎属于同一类型。

11 narratives   

记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分

参考例句：

• Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning. 结婚一向是许多小说的终点，然而也是一个伟大的开始。
• This is one of the narratives that children are fond of. 这是孩子们喜欢的故事之一。

12 dread   

vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧

参考例句：

• We all dread to think what will happen if the company closes.我们都不敢去想一旦公司关门我们该怎么办。
• Her heart was relieved of its blankest dread.她极度恐惧的心理消除了。