J K Rowling, the author of the multi-million selling Harry Potter series (which, if you haven’t read or heard about, sees young Harry sent to the magical school Hogwarts, where he learns his destiny over seven books of increasing length), is set to launch her website, Pottermore, in October. But she has allowed a million randomly selected fans – including members of the media – to enter the site now for a sneak preview into the world of the beloved Potter and his chums Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley – not forgetting nice-but-dim gamekeeper Hagrid, recently outed wizard Dumbledore and His Noselessness, Lord Voldemort.
Pottermore offers a wealth of background information about the books (though currently limited to the first, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone), as well as providing a vast online games platform and a social media network. If you want to know why the Dursleys are called Dursley, what Hermione Granger’s surname might have been, and why Rowling doesn’t like the number 4, then this is the site for you.
Though conmen have been selling fake Pottermore accounts, fans are still crying “Ho for Hogwarts!” (The name Hogwarts, trivia fans, incidentally first appeared in the Molesworth series in the 1950s.) First impressions are, largely, positive, with fan website Snitchsneeker.com giving a rundown on how the site looks, and HarryPotterReviews.wordpress.com saying “what I most enjoyed were the new texts by J K Rowling, telling us new information about McGonagall, the Dursleys and even Professor Quirrell.”
Meanwhile, Potter fans continue to amaze and delight, with artist M S Corley producing some new covers for the books to look like Penguin paperbacks from the 1970s. Check them out here.
- Good news for all! Bryan Young on The Huffington Post raved. “To say that Pottermore is an immersive experience might be an understatement.” You get your own personalissed wand – with “hundreds of possible combinations” that really do reflect your personality, then, after a visit to King’s Cross (where “all the fractioned platforms” are used by wizards – “7 1/2 is sort of like the Orient Express”), and sorted into a house at Hogwarts – again, “oddly prescient.” This is where the fun starts. Young claims not even to be a big fan – but he found it “riveting.” It’s good news for all authors, who should leap at the chance to expand their digital presence.
“Expecto pandemonium!” gushed Perez Hilton.
- Pottering about. “Forget Santa Claus,” blustered Keith Staskiewicz on Entertainment Weekly, “for a whole generation of children the real heartbreaking revelation was that we’re all Muggles and that’s all we’ll ever be.” Even though it’s still in beta mode, there’s enough stuff on the site to make your afternoon vanish “like a temporus suckus spell.” You can duel with friends, make spells, buy stuff from Diagon Alley – it’s “horribly, wonderfully addictive,” and “seems especially designed to destroy work productivity the world over.”
- A dissenting voice! Well, said Harriet Walker on The Independent, a little more evenly, it’s “a sort of interactive York Notes” (referring to the academic notes for GCSE students.) The community “blossomed” in “only a few seconds.” But “the visuals and facts are very firmly of the sort enjoyed only by 2ft pedants.” Pottermore won’t change the world, but it might “ add an extra layer to reading.” It’s like “all those extraneous hobbit maps and elfin dictionaries that a groaning J R R Tolkien found himself under pressure to produce.” But really, you’re better off looking at a bookshelf for “entertainment and inspiration.”
More on the boy wizard
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows breaks box office records
- The End of an Era?
- Deathly Hallows review