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Wednesday, November 14, 2001

Potter fans can't get enough of him

By ANNE GEGGIS | News-Journal Staff Writer

DAYTONA BEACH — Quidditch, anyone?

Kristen Harper is sure hankering to watch it unfold. The Ormond Beach resident would be among the legions of Harry Potter fans poised to watch their hero burst from print into living color this Friday.

But Harper will have to wait to watch Harry playing Quidditch, the polo-esque game on broomstick; her husband made her promise she wouldn't watch the film until after he returns from a business trip late Friday.

"I guess I'll have to wait and see it Saturday," says Harper, 31, who's on her seventh reading of the four-book series. The popular Potter series details the danger and delight an 11-year-old orphan encounters as he discovers his magical powers.

Concerns of fundamentalist Christian groups or book purists aside, there is likely to be fierce competition for the seat Harper would have occupied Friday. The British premiere of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" earlier this month brought out stars like Cher, Ben Stiller and Fergie, the former Duchess of York. And the U.S. debut is anticipated by multitudinous mini-troops -- advanced ticket sales on the Internet have already outpaced previous blockbusters.

"I can't wait," says Anastasia Lucignani, 10, a fifth-grader at Coronado Beach Elementary School. "I think there's going to be a lot of people there (at the movies), because it is so interesting." In addition to Anastasia, the entire fifth-grade class and two of the four, fourth-grade classes at Indian River Elementary School in New Smyrna Beach will be in front of the big screen Friday; the classes have planned a field trip to the multiplex that day. And Harper, the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Society of the Daytona Beach Area, was on her pulpit recently extolling the values -- like loyalty, individual worth and free will -- she reads into the chronicles of the young wizard who's cast a spell on the New York Times bestseller list.

"It's a book about using your imagination, using your friendship and using your courage in order to get through life," she says. "It's also about using your choices to determine who you are and where you stand."

For 11-year-old Christopher Halsema, a sixth-grader at St. Paul's Catholic School in Daytona Beach, the books' appeal is as simple as this: "It's something you'd only dream of -- put in a book."

Harry Potter's power to get youngsters reading has teachers raving -- and librarians scrambling to keep books on the shelf. Up to 250 people at a time have been on a waiting list to get their look at one of the 75 copies of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" the Volusia County Library owns. Four years since the release of that book -- the first in the series -- people still ask for it every week, says Rachel Bowers, head librarian of the Orange City branch of the Volusia County Library.

"So much of the literature for that age group had gone to stark, violent, deep, dark and intense issues," Bowers says. "Harry came along and it was all light and fanciful."

Even the fourth installment of the series, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" -- despite its 734 pages -- flies off the shelf.

"The (size of) Goblet of Fire' doesn't faze any of them," says Theresa Owen, children's librarian at Flagler County Public Library. The series has not been met with universal praise, however. A parental challenge to the books at Duval County Schools last month means that students must get parental permission before checking them out of the school library. Some Christian denominations have raised concerns that the books' use of spells and magic amounts to an endorsement of witchcraft.

"I haven't read the books, but you don't have to read a lot of material (about the books) to catch on," says Ron Gulick, leader of the Foursquare Gospel Church in Port Orange. "It's a story about a sorcerer, and our lives are involved in promoting the opposite of sorcery."

There are those, too, who lament that Harry Potter will no longer be a character formed in individuals' imaginations by the strokes of author J.K. Rowling's words. There's no doubt that the film's premiere marks the official beginning of a marketing onslaught, far removed from the personal interaction between reader and writer.

"It (the movie) is going to make a lot of money for someone and that's the bottom line, unfortunately," said Caroline Bernhardt, a first-grade teacher at Holly Hill Elementary School, who read the book to her 6- and 7-year-old students last year.

Tom Tyre, an instructor at Daytona Beach Community College who stood in line at midnight inside Books-A-Million to get the fourth book of the series, says it's too early to tell whether the movie might spoil Harry Potter, but he's optimistic. It helps, he says, that the author was involved in the film.

"It's like any great book. You have a special place in your mind with all those characters," Tyre says. "If the movie is close to my imagination, I'll be fine."

Halei Benefield, 10, of New Smyrna Beach, is about as much an expert on Harry Potter as you can find. She read each book, at the least two times, and, at the most, eight times, and bought the sidebooks like "Quidditch Through the Ages," and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." She has distinct opinions about the book vs. movie controversy.

"I think you should have read the book before you see the movie," says Halei, who plans to see the movie with 12 of her friends Saturday morning. "Because when I've read the book and seen the movie, the book is always better."

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