The Boy Who Lived: Harry Potter
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The Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling has become popular worldwide. The first three books in the series earned approximately $480 million in three years by selling over thirty-five million copies in thirty-five languages, making J.K. Rowling the 13th richest woman in Britain.
http://www.biography.com/people/jk-rowling-40998
Popularity of the books increased as more and more of the storyline was revealed. This timeless fantasy tale of an orphan boy who discovers his true magical powers and his courage when battling both the evil Lord Voldemort and his school enemy, Draco Malfoy, leads to unforgettable adventures with his two comrades Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. Throughout their journey through the seven years of school at Hogwarts, the trio faces many challenges that are sometimes bittersweet. J.K. Rowling’s series has held many readers captive throughout the years, and now it is time to uncover the creative inspiration behind these elaborate tales.
Contrary to popular belief, J.K. Rowling was neither homeless nor unemployed and did not write the beginning of Harry Potter on a napkin at a café. In reality, she lived in a small Edinburgh apartment with her baby, Jessica. She oftentimes took Jessica on walks because that was the only way she could get her to sleep. She eventually ended up in Colson’s café, which ironically is owned by her brother-in-law. During these peaceful moments, she took time to write about Harry Potter. She drew on several aspects of her life. For example, she used the King’s Cross station as the place where Harry and the other students would get on the train to go to Hogwarts. This is significant because not only did her father propose to her mother on a train, but her own husband, Neil Murray proposed to her on a train as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVfD3LMk6Fw
Another example of this is using her own personality as a child to shape the character of Hermione Granger. As a child, Rowling was very bookish and bossy with an undertone of insecurity behind a mask of confidence, making the character of Hermione very familiar to her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgWTUZyM7EQ
Using her life and a dash of Latin words, J.K. Rowling created Harry Potter on a mixture of notebooks, a Portugese diary, and an application for housing benefit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDhtJU7uLrQ&feature=related
The other books in the series did not follow this same routine of writing on miscellaneous papers in Colson's Cafe. For example, she finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on a marble bust in the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh.
J.K. Rowling was not as poor as many people thought; however, she was still a single mother living on benefit in a dilapidated and dirty apartment. Previous to her move to Edinburgh, she lived in Portugal and taught English, unfortunately, she could not work as a teacher and find affordable and convenient childcare. Therefore, she was forced to become a stay-at-home mother praying that her work as a writer would soon pay off. Not only did J.K. Rowling struggle to make ends meet and raise her daughter, but she also lost her mother to multiple sclerosis after six months of writing Harry Potter. This created an element of death and loss in her writing. Approximately four and a half years later, Rowling finally finished the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
J.K. Rowling wrote her first book at six years old, entitled “Rabbit”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgWTUZyM7EQ
From that moment on, Rowling knew she was a writer at heart. Several years later on a train from Manchester to London, inspiration for Harry Potter struck. She rummaged through her bag to find something to write down her thoughts with, but she found nothing, not even an eyeliner. As soon as she got back to her apartment, she began writing. One way she helped prepare herself to write more detailed aspects of the books was to draw out characters such as the Weasley family and Professor Sprouts, the herbology instructor at Hogwarts. In one of her notebooks, she has various scribblings of Latin words or phrases put together trying to find an appropriate name for the “dementors” in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Rowling also has a full description of every person in Harry Potter’s class, including name, level of magic, and allegiances.
During her writing at Colson’s café, J.K. Rowling sat in the corner table away from other customers, so she would not disturb their luncheons. She admits that her apartment was so dirty because she did not do housework for four years as she desperately poured out her creative writing onto the pages of her notebooks.
J.K. Rowling finally finished the book and found a Literary Agent named Christopher Little, who sent the work off to publishing companies. The early publishing houses that J.K. Rowling sent Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to immediately put the work on the reject pile claiming it was too long for a children’s book and was not politically correct. Both the publisher and her agent told her to keep her real job, especially since children’s authors typically do not make a lot of money. After a number of rejections, she finally managed to get her book published by Bloomsbury for $4,000. However, the book did not really become popular until it was brought to New York. In a “bidding war” for the publishing of this book, Vice President of Scholastic Publishing, Arthur Levine, made an unprecedented advance of $105,000 to this unknown, first-time author, which was a risky but worthwhile chance. He made this decision based on her unique use of character development, which is considered uncommon in children's novels.
Harry Potter took the United States by storm. Since Harry Potter became such a large part of pop culture, both praise and dissenting opinions arose about the ethics of the books. While twelve thousand people line up in Toronto to hear J.K. Rowling read the beginning of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book Four), others were accusing Rowling of practicing witchcraft herself. In one interview, she disclaims this accusation by saying 95 percent of her material is from her imagination and the other five percent is from historical information about what people believed in previous eras.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgWTUZyM7EQ
With the surprising popularity, Rowling’s publishers asked her to complete one book of the series per year. This was a daunting task, especially as the books became increasingly longer. If this was not stressful enough, reporters swarmed her house, and even attacked her father with disturbing questions.
Today, Harry Potter fanatics include people from all age groups. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was so popular that it ended up being valued at 19.85 million dollars. More successful; however, was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the most popular book, which valued at an astounding 33.92 million dollars. Because of the success of the Harry Potter novels, the first book was turned into a movie in November of 2001. Still to this day, the movie, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone directed by Christopher Columbus, is considered the highest grossing movie during opening weekend in the United Kingdom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-ogu8UY-X8
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/08/harry-potter-book-sales-box-office-results#data
In addition to the movies, Harry Potter World in Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida made its debut in June of 2009, furthering the socialization of Harry Potter through wand shops and other merchandise apparel. Similarly, on college campuses, such as Illinois State University, you can find competing Quidditch teams, a game played in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
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Social Activity – This hub immediately addresses the success of the Harry Potter novels emphasizing its effectiveness in distribution and socialization as a text. Then, the hub further explains the social restrictions placed on Rowling, and her production of the Harry Potter series. I appreciated that section that dispelled the rumor that Rowling was homeless and unemployed which makes a good story, but is untrue. I also enjoyed learning about the different inspirations Rowling gathered from her life that influenced the development of the characters and setting. The description of the storm Harry Potter took the world by further helped develop the socialization of the Harry Potter novels. One suggesting I believe would be viable to include are actual scholarly critiques of the Harry Potter novels. Although the vox populi is important to understanding the social activity as a text, I feel that an examination of the books from a literary aspect would help characterize the writing as good or bad. You could also include opposing viewpoints. Another suggestion you could include in your hub is that you could add more to how the genre shaped the production of the novels. For example, you could write about what influenced JK Rowling to write fiction by exploring her background education. You could also add more to who Rowling intended the audience of Harry Potter to be, whether she was writing the novel originally for herself or to an audience as a means to meet some end. Overall though I loved this hub.
All of your descriptions work well to tell the story of J.K Rowling and her struggle to get her book sold. Although I am knowledgeable of a lot of the background, some of it was still new to me. The information you chose to include in your slides layed out how much Rowling put into her books. Because she didn’t have a lot her books were everything and you did a good job of conveying that. However, I don’t think the slides worked well off of your descriptions. The Harry Potter series is magical and a fantasy, which means you could have put anything into the slides. They lacked the magic and the awe that the series evokes. The ecology slide was one of my favorites. I liked the fact that you included her picture here and she doesn’t look too happy. This worked well with how you were talking about the death element she includes in the books. I would have like to see more connections like this to the book reflected in the other slides. One thing I would work on is proofreading; I noticed a few typos. Overall I enjoyed reading about J.K. Rowling’s life and how it inspired her books. You chose an interesting angle of talking about Rowling’s life and how it inspired the books rather than just giving summaries about all of the books.
**Housekeeping**
- Presentation Notes
- Use of Citation
I really like how you've gone directly to interviews with J.K. Rowling on YouTube in order to access primary sources - by referening Rowling herself, you're able to get past many of the myths surrounding the writing of Harry Potter (such as everyone thinking she was unemployed - a myth I've told many of my own students over the years...)
I like that you've chosen a unique title for your presentation to separate it from other pages about Harry Potter. Something to consider for online media, though, is that including Harry Potter somewhere in the URL and title (maybe after the unique title) can help audiences more easily find your webpage in searches.
**Production**
- Describing how it's produced
- Acknowledgement of creators
- Describing the research done by the authors
You've done a very good job describing the ways in which Rowling's own life informed the writing of the book, particularly in showing how she modeled Hermione after herself and in showing how the death of her mother fostered an element of death and loss in her writing.
Rowling's in-depth notes are one of her most remarkable writing habits, and the way you describe them shows just how long she spent preparing her book. I like how you show us that it took her nearly five years to finish Book One, and that she wrote out lists of everyone in Harry's classes, and how she struggled to find the write name for the dementors. This reveals the kind of effort it takes to create a coherent universe for the setting of a story, and we can apply her own habits of invention when we consider how to research our own writing (both for fiction and nonfiction).
Learning that J.K. Rowling relocated to a coffeeshop because her apartment was too messy really made my day (not I can relate to writing being way more fun that cleaning...) To build on this, it would have been good to note how her writing habits changed after the success of *The Philosopher's Stone." Was she able to continue writing at the coffee shop? Or did she need to find a place that was less public?
**Genre Conventions**
- Identifying the genre
- Describing the genre conventions
- Showing how these conventions are used.
Your Distribution section does a very good job talking about how the genre of children's novels adversely affected the publication chances. *A Wrinkle in Time* suffered a similar fate for a few years wherein publishers rejected it as "unsuitable" - also ironic given it's later popular success. Also, I like how you give the reasons why Arthur Levine made his unprecedented advance - this talks about why the book was unique and how people typically imagined childrens books up until *Harry Potter.*
**Social Activity**
- Describing social and physical distribution
- Discussing cultural reception
Your descriptions of how the book came to slowly reach a publisher and then later take the U.S. by storm reveals a great deal about the fickle nature of the publishing industry. That Rowling was advised to "keep her day job" is also quite telling, particularly given how she later went from an unknown author to having 12,000 people line up for a single reading in Toronto. You build on this by talking about the expansion of the *Harry Potter* franchise to movies and theme parks, giving a very clear picture how how the book was received.
To build on this further, you may want to talk about how the book has changed our ideas of the book. Since some have accused her of witchcraft and asked for her book to be burned, it would be good to note whether her books have led people to change their behavior in other ways.
**Audience**
- Identifying the intended audience
- Discussing how genre coventions are used to attract that audience
- Indicating audience reception.
The considerations of genre in your Distribution section also tell us a great deal about how adult publishers imagine the children's audience. It would be good to go a bit more in-depth with this and describe the current age range for her audience and then talk about what her fans have done in order to make the real world more like the *Harry Potter* world (the birth of Quidditch tournaments, for example).
The milestones listed for the movie in your Socialization section help us see just how popular the movie was as it came out. Citing similar numbers for the books as they were released would also show us how the work's popularity picked-up over time.
Overall, very good presentation - I really appreciated the specific details and your use of a wide variety of primary sources in your research.
Production- Your production slide was very informative.I am a die hard Harry Potter fan, but I myself thought that J.K. Rowling started writing this series on a napkin. I like how many examples you put into this slide. They showed how much you did your research and that you really knew what you were talking about. I noticed that the production of the series had aspects that were also found in other slides throughout your CHAT map. Rowling did a lot more than simply write down all of her ideas for the story of Harry Potter. There was mention of Rowling drawing pictures of some of the characters from the series, which I feel would help in the descriptions of those characters while writing because she knew exactly how they would look in real life. You also mentioned that she had various latin words which she tried to put together to come up with a name for the dementors introduced in the third book of the series. As well as the list of every single student in Harry's class. I feel that all of those things went into the production and I love that you gave us all of these examples because they show just how much work really went into the series.You also told us where she went to write, and how she went away from others when she did. I loved this CHAT map, it was full of great information on the series and I think you did a fabulous job!
Audience: First off, I loved your chat map and I thought it was very informative. I liked the way you organized your slides and thought you did a very good job of putting the right amount of detail into your slide descriptions as well as allowing your slides to kind of tell the story of how Harry Potter developed as opposed to just writing summaries of the books. Also I was glad that you mentioned both sides of the audience's reaction to Harry Potter by saying that while many people loved it, some were accusing J.K. Rowling of witchcraft. You also did a good job of explaining why the book was originally rejected by publishers and explaining how it finally got published and became known worldwide. I liked that you mentioned that the original intended audience for the book was children but you also could have explained how the audience grew and developed over time as adults started reading the books, especially as they became darker and less childlike. I do wish though that you had elaborated more on why earlier publishers though Harry Potter was politically incorrect and if any other audience members had the same reaction when reading the book. You could also have mentioned, after stating that some audience members accused Rowling of witchcraft, how the book is received today. Do some people still reject the book that harshly or is it more well received? This could have also led to how some schools did not want the book to be allowed in the library or if parents were restricting children from reading the book as well. Overall though you did a fantastic job!
Right off the bat, I have to say that I love the title. Everyone else just went with the name of their topic, which was pretty lame, so I’m glad you threw in some variation. I HOPE everyone knew it was Harry Potter before having to glance at the first sentence. In the very beginning, you establish an audience without probably even knowing that you’re doing it. When you stated the amount of copies she sold, and how many different languages the book was published in, it shows how diverse her readership truly is. Since it’s fairly obvious that more readers would gain interest as the storyline and books progressed, I think you should discuss some of the reasons that kept readers from giving up on the seven-book series. After all, a decade is a long time to keep up with a series. I do really feel bad for Rowling though, having to pump out a book every year. I mean, she does make an ungodly amount of money, but that amount of stress isn’t good for anyone. I feel like that relates to the demanding readership she has, always expecting another epic book soon. It also shows just how dedicated she was since she didn’t simply tell the audience that the next book would come out when she felt like it. Perhaps in reception you could mention a little more about how the popularity skyrocketed because of the movies. Overall, you did a great job!
Dylan Blaha
Social Activity: This CHAT map does a fantastic job of tying all of the aspects of CHAT together. Each aspect that you addressed you tied it to the next one in one way or another. I really enjoyed the way you tied the production piece to Ecology by pointing out that she had a small child at home to take care of and that not only effected the manner in which she wrote it and the situation that she wrote it in. You also tied socialization into reception by showing that the book was exceptionally received by American readers and that through that there have been movies made and also a theme park. It is also interesting to see that while most of the public received the book well there were some people who believed the book to be evidence of witchcraft. I thought the set up of the map itself was very well done. However some suggestions would be to discuss how the books succeed in the UK along with how well it does in the US. Is the book as well received there as it is here? Although this map was about the books, adding how the book was received compared to the movies would have been another aspect to look at. Is the book more successful now because of the movies? Overall there wasn’t much to add to this map and it was not only well written but had good information.
Genre Convention:
I would just like to say that I really liked your CHAT map and thought it was extremely informative and detailed without being over the top! I can see clearly that the genre in JK Rowling's series Harry Potter is fantasy, and this genre is very appropriate for the audience she was trying to reach. Because she was trying to write for children, she could incorporate an incredible amount of imagination and creativity in her writing. I didn't know that she was rejected so much in the beginning process of trying to get her book published, just because the book was considered to long and not politically correct. I think that was a rediculous reason for automatically putting it in the reject pile because when you write a fantasy book for children, you are supposed to make the children use their imagination and creativity to picture a new world with situations you would never think to face in the real world. Also, yes the books are long, but that shouldn't matter. When I get really into a book, I can't put the book down, and I usually don't even realize how much I've read. I had no idea how much work actually went into writing this series! She had mutiple notebooks analyzing each of her characters, and I had no idea that each of the words and phrases that she used, like "dementor" actually came from somewhere and weren't just made up! From notes and little bits and pieces, JK Rowling was able to create a series of books that are absolutely incredible for people of all ages, and were so popular that they also got turned into movies! Great job on your CHAT map, I honestly don't have any questions for you!
Genre Conventions: I really like how you tell us that this series started out as a book, but beacuse of the popularity it turned into a movie and eventually into a theme park attraction. I thought it was interesting that it had a different name for the first movie in a different country. I also really liked that you say how she decided to become a writer. Because she wrote a previous book and realized writing was her passion she chose to continue writing books instead of a magazine or a short story. I also like how you outline that the genre of being considered a childrens story was one of the obstacles that she had to over come. Instead of going back and rewriting the books or scrapping them, she kept on going and because of this she now has a best selling book!
Housekeeping: I like how you used a varity of sources. I would have never thought to use sources like interviews on youtube. It is a very creative source, but obviously proved to be a very good source of information. Also I like how you laid out your slides and broke up your information with you citations. The slides are very easy to read and the pictures preview what you were going to elaborate on the slides. The only critique I have is to make sure that somewhere on your title slide or something you have the title of Harry Potter. For people who don't follow the books, it would make it a little easier for them to know what the topic of this presentation would be before having to read the captions below the slides.
I thought that it was cool that your CHAT map avoided the plot of the Harry Potter series, but still related. Although there was no slide for audience I can make the connections fairly simply. The acts of the publishers are an assumption on what children will and will not read. The fact that so many people line up for a simple reading shows how the book has affected children. The audience has been evolving throughout the existence of the series and movies. Even though a book in a year is a lot to take on, fans of the series would feel as if it was forever before the next book would come out. I remember when you had to reserve a copy of the next book as soon as the release date was announced. This proves the effect of such a long book that children would never read. Of course the audience jumps at the chance to be in the world of Harry Potter. The world of Harry Potter can be seen on some Saturdays in the quad when there are Quidditch club meetings. As a huge fan of the series I thought it was cool that she wrote out what each character was like and who they were friends with. It obviously takes a lot of planning to create such a huge series with so many twists and turns. Once someone has read the seventh book everything that Snape has done from book one through his death makes sense. His good or bad story line made the story interesting. Harry Potter is one of few books and movies that feature adults that are not clueless. Rowlings ability to keep all of the story lines and character striaght shows a great deal of organization and talent. Overall I liked the CHAT map.
Social Activity- Obviously there is a lot of social activity that is associated with Harry Potter, and right off the bat you gave information about how successful and wide spread the books have become which I liked. In the activity slide you discussed the cafe that Rowling used to frequent but I thought you could have added more about the importance of the cafe and why she chose to write there. You gave really good information about the distribution of the books and explained the how difficult it was for the first book to be published. While you mentioned a little bit of the “praise and dissenting opinions” in the Reception slide I feel like you could add in more about the controversy of the books and maybe even the extreme fandom that have come from the success. I liked how you added in the fact about how people believed Rowling practiced witchcraft. Another interesting point you had was about how reporters and people would swarm her house and bother her family members. I feel that the large scale popularity and how it affected her life is an important part of social activity. I enjoyed your Chat map but I did think you could have added more to the socialization slide. Good Job!
Housekeeping and Production – Your Hub first sparked my interest with its title page. It was a unique way of introducing the presentation without using the title of the movie. The way that you cited your photos did not take away from the overall look of each slide. In fact, I had to go back and check to make sure that each photo was cited as I didn’t even notice that they were included. Your hub is also the first I’ve seen that cited the information in each description. I think that the way you included a citation after each paragraph made the descriptions a bit choppy. However, I liked that your sources were youtube videos. Having links to the videos will give readers a way to learn even more about the information you provided. I’m glad that you were able to tackle the “contrary belief” of the beginning of Harry Potter being written on a napkin, and I was also interested to learn about the proposals of her husband and father. I think that you provided good information about where she wrote the books. While I enjoying reading about how she based the character of Hermione off of herself as a child, I would have liked to learn a bit more about how J. K. Rowling drew from her own life to create other characters and really develop the plot lines of the books.
Production—I thought it was clever to address the many misconceptions surrounding the origin of J.K. Rowling’s world famous series and to set the record straight with interesting facts. For example, you noted that Rowling began the novel (sans napkins) at a nearby café with her sleeping baby by her side. I think it’s interesting that you highlighted how aspects of Rowling’s life have played into the novels, such as the train stations that hold significance for both the novels’ characters and Rowling herself. Also, I liked that you included the inspirations for certain characters of the story such as Hermione Granger, who is based on Rowling’s childhood personality. Another interesting detail you included was the fact that Rowling used Latin for names of characters such death eaters. She also kept meticulous notes on every aspect of the series, which demonstrates her dedication to her work and passion for the world she has created.
I really like how your hub focuses on J.K. Rolling’s life and how she came to pretty much write one of the best-selling series ever. It is very well focused and very easy to follow, so I applaud you for that. You referenced where you got all of your information by putting the URL after everything, so good job with that as well. Like I said, your comments were very easy to follow and clearly stated the information you had to provide instead of beating around the bush and adding fillers. Also, your slides were perfect for Harry Potter; they depicted the tone of the stories perfectly with their dark background and just a shimmer of yellow light which makes me think of magic. It almost felt like there was a storyline to your slides, like they were all connected, instead of just a bunch of information thrown together which makes slides seem choppy at times. Yours flowed very well with your comments below them, and I was actually anticipating the next comment each time I came to a new slide.
Audience-
Macy- Overall I thought you did a great job on your CHAT map and a good choice to do one on too. The first thing that I noticed about your presentation was that it was visually appealing. You did not put too little or too much on your slides and comments. Everything just seemed to flow from slide to slide. Also, I thought this book had a very interesting reception as it was written as a childrens book that eventually targeted adults too. You did a very good job showing this and why it was received how it was. I like how you mention that as the books became darker and more in depth that adults began to appreciate these books as well. This supports the genre conventions used to attract that particular audience. Also, this book was received differently among people. While there was a lot of appreciation and support for this book, there was an evenly sized opposition to it. I thought it was interesting how many accused the book of being evil and promoting witchcraft. It was good that you helped defend Rowling with her saying that 95 percent of the material is from her imagination and the other 5 historical information. This shows you did your research to indicate what the audience reception has been. You nailed every aspect of Audience and overall did an awesome job on your CHAT map. The only suggestion I have is maybe to explain on the reception slide just why Harry Potter became integrated so successfully to today’s pop culture.
-Ben Grider
PRODUCTION: I enjoyed reading this Hub. I really liked how you focused more on JK Rowling as a writer rather than entirely on Harry Potter. I am the one person who has never read a Harry Potter book and have only seen one movie (Yes, I know, I'm a terrible person and a poor excuse for a human being) and was able to follow along very well. Had you gone into great depth of the plot, readers and viewers of the books and movies may have been able to draw connections, but not having done either, the excess information would have been nearly meaningless. The example of JK Rowling drawing the characters based on herself was I find it funny that we discussed JK Rowling in class and just about everything that was said about her was disproved through this presentation. Being that Harry Potter is such a world wide sensation, it's astonishing to know that she faced difficulties trying to get the book published.
I didn’t realize that JK Rowling had based so much of the books on her personal life. I didn’t realize that most of the book had been written in a coffee shop! I also didn’t know that she had based the train station off of one she knew in real life, of that she had actually gone to boarding school. It’s pretty interesting to know that she based Hermione off of different aspects of herself. Perhaps that’s why it seemed so natural. I didn’t realize how deep into poverty she was. I had known for a while that she was a single mother, but I didn’t realize that he was simultaneously coping with her mother’s death and poverty. I also think that JK Rowling can give the rest of us hope. If she could create this work of incredible art under such difficult conditions, then it proves that poverty really isn’t a dead end. I think its always really shocking to see how much money this series has actually produced. However, it might have been interesting to see how much money the series has grossed as a whole, not just the first three books. Regardless, that’s still a huge profit for only a few books. If the millions of fans aren’t a testament to the success of the series, then the profits certainly can be.
Audience - Really great job of this presentation Macy! For starters, I'm obsessed with Harry Potter so I definitely fall under that category. Ryan Edel gave an example of this in class for this being the type of book and movie series where the audience can change over time. In the original book, and maybe first couple books, they were aimed primarily at the younger generation. Wizardry, a made up world, and mystical creatures were all key interests in the mind of younger kids. But as the books and movies progressed, more morals and important lessons were underlying the book's plot. The stories started to turn darker, bloodier and deeper. This deep and complicated plot is definitely more related to be older people. Not to mention the inclusion of death, which became increasingly common throughout the last couple movies. And of course, there are the audience members that are not going to be willing to partake in this book and movie series, which typically includes those against the belief of witchcraft. But overall, I really like your presentation. You really do know a lot about the series and it shows! Keep up the good work.
I enjoy that the title of your hub was the boy who lived. It interested me because it was different then the other hubs I have read. Next I enjoy your background information. I had always heard that she wrote harry potter on napkins and never researched it further, but I find it really gross that she did no housework for four years. Some of this information was very interesting, for example that she was proposed to on a train. But I thought it might be a bit too much. I thought that in general it was an interesting presentation but it could of used some refining. The books weren’t really talked about that much, I would of liked to hear more about her planning process in the books, but I understand that this information might not of been available. Overall I really did like this hub. I am a harry potter reader and I still felt that it was informative to me, so you did a really good job of including information that wasn’t all common knowledge for a regular reader.
Disclaimer: My internet was down last night, so this is what I have for you within the 15 minutes before class started.
Overall I feel like your CHAT map had a lot of information in it. I like your slides, your use of color as well as your layout, and I like the amount of text you have provided. Your distribution slide presented a lot of information about how the text reached the audience which I really appreciate. Your socialization slide provided a lot of good information on genre conventions. I like how you included the transition from book to movie. However, there are some things you could improve on. I would have liked for you to have included the change of title from Philosopher’s Stone to Sorcerer’s Stone.
ryanedel Level 2 Commenter 3 months ago
Thanks, Macy. I really like the attention you're giving here to J.K. Rowling's life and how it related to her writing - I'm looking forward to learning more.