Issue date: Nov 14, 1999

In this article:
J.K. Rowling's 5 favorite children's books

By Michele Hatty

ON'T CENSOR what children read. So says the planet's leading kid's author, Harry Potter series creator J.K. Rowling. For National Children's Book Week starting tomorrow, we asked her if she could unlock the secret behind getting America's kids as obsessed about books as they are about Pokemon. Rowling, a 34-year-old single mother from Scotland, advocates letting children experiment with different types of books -- advice deeply rooted in her own book-filled childhood.

"When I was quite young, my parents never said books were off limits,'' Rowling said in an interview during her whirlwind first trip to the U.S. as a certified publishing phenomenon (all three books lead best-seller lists, with 8.2 million copies in print). "As a child, I read a lot of adult books. I don't think you should censor kids' reading material. It's important just to let them go do what they need to do."

Her point of view may seem self-serving to a vocal faction that has branded the Harry Potter books anti-Christian witchcraft and wants schools and libraries to ban them. But, she said, "I am not trying to influence anyone into black magic. That's the very last thing I'd want to do.

"I'm not so naive that I didn't know or didn't suspect that, at some point, someone was going to say, 'You're writing about the occult.' My wizarding world is a world of the imagination. I think it's a moral world."

Rowling puts the onus of getting kids to open up a book in the first place on parents. She says that the best way to get children excited about reading is to read to them from the beginning of their lives.

"These days, parents have huge demands on their time -- mothers in particular. Being a single parent, I'm very aware of that. But if you have kids, you've got to make that space."

Rowling's daughter Jessica is 6. "I've always read to her, but it's only very recently that I've started reading my books to her. And it was magical. I will never do a more important reading, not if I speak to a stadium full of people."

Especially astounding about the Harry Potter craze is the books' popularity among both boys and girls. In Little League dugouts and at soccer-game halftimes across the country, the adventures of Harry Potter, an 11-year-old wizard-in-training, is Topic A among kids, right up there with the new Pokemon movie.

Rowling, who dreamt up Harry while on a train to London in 1990, is as surprised as anyone that her books have taken off. But she isn't surprised that kids are enjoying the ride.

"I don't believe in the kind of magic that appears in my books." she confessed. "But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."

J.K. Rowling, 34, is the author of the three Harry Potter best sellers. She lives and writes in Scotland.

Michele Hatty's 9-year-old niece, Janine, and nephew, Mikey, can't wait for the next Harry Potter book.

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• The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame. "My dad read it to me when I was 4 and sick with the measles."


• Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild. "It's a very girly book. I still reread it."


• A Girl of the Limberlost, Gene Stratton-Porter. "It freaked me out, because the father drowns in a swamp hole. But it's a magnificent book."


• Little White Horse, Elizabeth Goudge. "She always said exactly what the characters were eating. I found that really satisfying. That's why you always get lists of food at Hogwarts," Harry's school.


• Manxmouse, Paul Gallico. "It's superb."

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