Rags to Riches
Fans of the popular children’s book series Harry Potter know that J.K. Rowling’s own story reads a bit like a fairy tale. J.K. stands for Joanne Kathleen, but she goes by Jo. Jo’s first publisher in the UK was afraid that boys would not want to read about Harry Potter if they knew it had been written by a woman, so they encouraged her to use her initials.
Jo moved to Portugal in her mid-twenties to teach English as a Foreign Language. She married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes, but they were divorced shortly after their daughter Jessica was born in 1993. Jo decided to move back to Scotland to be near her sister Di, who was studying law in Edinburg.
Jo was in the midst of writing Harry Potter at this point, and she found herself divorced and living on public assistance in a tiny tenement flat. With a baby to take care of, she could only work when her daughter was asleep, so she would push the child through Edinburgh in her carriage and dash into a café to write for an hour while the infant napped. Jo claims that knowing she had very little time until her daughter would wake up again made her very productive. She wrote a lot during her baby’s naps.
Harry Potter has crossed over from children’s books to New York Times Best-Seller List Material. Jo has received many tributes for her work, including The British Book Awards Children’s Books of the Year. Harry Potter has been translated into more than a dozen languages, gaining fans among young people all over the world. Even the US edition has been localized. When fried potatoes appear at feasts at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, they have gone from “chips” to “fries”, for example. The new movie version of the story will surely bring a whole new group of fans to the forefront.
Harry Potter devotees anxiously awaited the sequels. Jo said there would be seven books in total: one for each year that Harry attends Hogwarts. People often ask if Jo attended a boarding school. She says that she didn’t but if that there had been a chance to go to a place like Hogwarts, she would have been on the first train!
When asked about her storyline, Jo says, “The idea that we could have a child who escapes from the confines of the adult world and goes somewhere where he has power, both literally and metaphorically, really appealed to me.” Based on the tremendous number of copies sold, the Harry Potter concept appeals to many people.
10. Fans of the popular children’s book series Harry Potter know that J.K. Rowling’s own story is very similar to Harry’s.
11. The author had to take a pen-name because the boys wouldn’t read the book written by a woman.
12. When Jo divorced, she lived on state benefits in Edinburg.
13. Jo loved writing in cafes while her daughter was asleep.
14. Each edition of the book is different depending on the country it is published in.
15. Many people love the idea that a child can literally and metaphorically run away from the world of adults.
