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Are the books perfect? Indeed not. Some sections are too long. In Deathly Hallows, for instance, there's an awful lot of wandering around and camping in that tent; it starts to feel like Ms. Rowling running out the clock on the school year to fit the format of the previous six books.
And sometimes she falls prey to the Robinson Crusoe syndrome. In Crusoe, whenever the marooned hero requires something, he ventures out to his ship — which has conveniently run aground on the reef surrounding his desert island — and takes what he needs from stores (in one of the most amusing continuity flubs in the history of English literature, Robinson once swims out naked...then fills his pockets). In much the same manner, whenever Harry and his friends get into a tight corner, they produce some new spell — fire, water to douse the fire, stairs that conveniently turn into a slide — and squiggle free. I accepted most of these, partly because there's enough child in me to react gleefully rather than doubtfully (in a way, the Potter books are The Joy of Magic rather than The Joy of Cooking) but also because I understand that magic is its own thing, and probably boundless. Still, by the time the Battle of Hogwarts was reaching its climax of clumping giants, cheering portraits, and flying wizards, I almost longed for someone to pull out a good old MAC-10 and start blasting away like Rambo.
If all those creative spells — produced at the right moment like the stuff from Crusoe's ship — were a sign of creative exhaustion, it's the only one I saw, and that's pretty amazing. Mostly Rowling is just having fun, knocking herself out, and when a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too. You can take that one to the bank (and, Reader, she did).
One last thing: The bighead academics seem to think that Harry's magic will not be strong enough to make a generation of nonreaders (especially the male half) into bookworms...but they wouldn't be the first to underestimate Harry's magic; just look at what happened to Lord Voldemort. And, of course, the bigheads would never have credited Harry's influence in the first place, if the evidence hadn't come in the form of best-seller lists. A literary hero as big as the Beatles? ''Never happen!'' the bigheads would have cried. ''The traditional novel is as dead as Jacob Marley! Ask anyone who knows! Ask us, in other words!''
But reading was never dead with the kids. Au contraire, right now it's probably healthier than the adult version, which has to cope with what seems like at least 400 boring and pretentious ''literary novels'' each year. While the bigheads have been predicting (and bemoaning) the postliterate society, the kids have been supplementing their Potter with the narratives of Lemony Snicket, the adventures of teenage mastermind Artemis Fowl, Philip Pullman's challenging His Dark Materials trilogy, the Alex Rider adventures, Peter Abrahams' superb Ingrid Levin-Hill mysteries, the stories of those amazing traveling blue jeans. And of course we must not forget the unsinkable (if sometimes smelly) Captain Underpants. Also, how about a tip of the old tiara to R.L. Stine, Jo Rowling's jovial John the Baptist?
I began by quoting Shakespeare; I'll close with the Who: The kids are alright. Just how long they stay that way sort of depends on writers like J.K. Rowling, who know how to tell a good story (important) and do it without talking down (more important) or resorting to a lot of high-flown gibberish (vital). Because if the field is left to a bunch of intellectual Muggles who believe the traditional novel is dead, they'll kill the damn thing.
It's good make-believe I'm talking about. Known in more formal circles as the Ministry of Magic. J.K. Rowling has set the standard: It's a high one, and God bless her for it.
