Harry Potter and the Fantasy Renaissance

By Pamela E. Apkarian-Russell

(This story appeared originally in “Unravel the Gavel“.)

  If you don’t know who Harry Potter is ask any literate child or go into some of the stores that sell Harry Potter ornaments, games, etc. Harry Potter is written by J.K. Rowlings, and is about a young orphan boy who finds out he is a wizard. There have been four books written so far in this series as Harry goes back and forth between Hoggwarts the Wizarding School, and Privot Drive where he spends the summer vacations with his mean and hateful aunt and uncle and his bullying obese cousin Dudley Dersley. Dragons, Basilisks, Unicorns, and Blast-ended Scruts, are just some of the fantasy creatures Harry and his two closest friends Herminone Granger and Ron Weisley encounter. Learning to be a Wizard isn’t easy, especially when “You Know Who” (Lord Voldamore, the evil wizard who everyone is afraid to name) is out to kill you. The plots are complicated and full of color and are not just for kids.

There hasn’t been much out there to excite fantasy addicts of all ages since Douglas Adams’s cult classic “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” The style of both these writers is much the same and it is difficult to accept the fact that they are not by the same author. Since J.R.R Tolkien’s “Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings”, fantasy (not fairy tales and children’s stories) have sort of stagnated. Even when his “Silmarillion” came out, there wasn’t any revival in this genre. The Hobbit and the following trilogy have continued to be the most read books of this type.

The Silmarillion was a prequel to these, published posthumously. Most readers got bogged down in the opening chapter of the creation and failed to read what was probably the best thing Tolkien ever wrote and that is the Lay of Beren and Luthien Tennuvial. Many find the names of the people and places difficult to pronounce. Gandalf-Mithrander are harder to read than Dick or Jane and yet children love these books about little people with furry toes, dragons, and rings of power. I have always maintained that if you want to hook a child on reading, add Tolkien to the curriculum. Most who have read the books as children or young adults go back and reread them over and over during their lifetimes.

   There are some great collectibles besides the books themselves for Tolkien’s works and early calendars and cards are not selling for a few dollars. The illustrations, especially using Tolkien’s original drawings, are still the best and closest to the way these beings looked. Every artist and his brother has done renditions of elves, hobbits, ents, wizards, and other characters from the books, but the original ones, the ones by the author are still the best.

If reading Tolkien is better than reading “War & Peace”, and should be taught in the schools, so should the Harry Potter stories. Both teach ethics, emphasize how important friendship and loyalties are, and show how important self-sufficiency and believing in yourself enough to try and do your best, are. Often things are not what they seem and “All that glitters isn’t gold.” Many refer to these books as children’s books, written so well and with so much detail that children can enjoy them, but I disagree. These books are for adults and need to be read by children as well.

There will be those who say the books are scary. Nonsense. I have heard these same people say that the “Wizard of Oz” and “Nightmare Before Christmas” are too scary. Children are taught fear just as they are prejudice. The evening news is scary, not these classics. The younger the child, the more they tend to love these stories. Even the “Chronicles of Narnia” have evil beings and death.

  Harry Potter is a young boy who has a great evil that wants to destroy him and all the standards of what he and we believe to be good. His struggle to survive by learning and growing, using both magical means and the aid of good wizards, help him to defeat the “bad guys”. C.S. Lewis and Tolkien would have been delighted with the characters, the magical beings, and the moral fiber of the stories. The fact that a movie will soon be out, based on the first book, and that everyone is awaiting the next book, has awoken the dragon. The dragon in mythology has always been a symbol of knowledge for good or bad. While they await the arrival of the next book and play Harry Potter trivia, many are digging out the old and older books about wizards and dragons, Good versus evil, Elves and Dwarves, Ghosts, and witches. The world of imagination and creativity is being stimulated and people are reading and reacting in a positive manner. This is not only in literature and art but in the field of collecting. There are more people seeking out the images on paintings, postcards, and in books, but it is also creating new ones.

Unlike with Tolkien, where you could actually learn Elfish as a language, the Harry Potter novels give us new words and jargon. Muggles and Quidditch are just two of the words you will find have become part of your vocabulary after reading the books. If these new collectibles born out of a new book, are causing a revived in interest in the old, let us look at some of the forgotten treasures of the past, aside from the many books on or about the mystical and magical.

The Toy Town Tavern (a Treadway Inn) in Winchendon, Mass. had panels in the dining room which depicted scenes from nursery rhymes. This “Old Woman in the Shoe” is just one of those panels that appeared on Artview cards. They are beautifully done in a very stylized manner and are quite difficult to find. Collectors of Winchendon memorabilia might want to check under fantasy categories as well as in Massachusetts. Those who are interested in magical creatures might find the Phoenix, a bird that is reborn from its own ashes, filed under birds. The fairy on the card “Midsummer Night’s Dream” could be found under fantasy, literature, or nudes! We found the wonderful mushroom-being with a skier filed under someone’s section on Italian non-views! I might have gone looking under sports or mushrooms but never in a section on Italy.

The opera and music is another place to go looking for the mystical and magical. Mozart’s Magic Flute, Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Rimsky-Korsakov’s "Scheherazade", are just a few of the posters which have been created for each new production. Of course, the ballet can’t be omitted if for no other reason than the Christmas season wouldn’t be complete without a performance of the Nutcracker.

What child would not want to be transported to the North Pole and Santa’s workshop? Who would not want to see where Peter Cottontail paints all those Easter Eggs? Are there still Leprechauns living in the Emerald Isle? Does your cat use your computer at night when you are asleep to contact his relatives and friends around the world? Fantasy is so wonderful, as you never know where you will find it, and it has as much humor as it does winged creatures. It could be just around the corner, in the next box of postcards you look in, between the pages of a book, or in a painting in a museum. Look for it and it will find you, which means life will never be mundane and insipid, nor will your collecting.