THE FANTASTIC Harry Potter.

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling has become one of the most popular children's series of our time. Featuring a young orphan who discovers--at the age of 11--that his parents had magical powers and that he is a wizard, the books chronicle Harry's adventures in magic at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. With such an appealing, noble hero and a vividly drawn cast of friends and enemies, it's easy to understand why these books have kindled a nationwide interest in fantasy. Chances are many of your students spent the first part of the summer in rapt anticipation of the release of the fourth book in the series, published just last month.

The fantasy genre has a lot in common with any good plot-driven fiction: It's imaginative and tells a compelling story. In fantasy, however, anything goes. Characters can fly on broomsticks, cast spells, and converse with animals. The Harry Potter books make an ideal starting point for discussions about this genre. Use the activities cited on these pages to heighten your students' appreciation for inventive storytelling and to inspire them to think about what goes into creating a good fantasy story.

J.K. Rowling Spills Some Secrets

Q Flow do you come up with all the unique names, places, and things in the Harry Potter books?

A Many of the names are invented, for example, "Quidditch" and "Muggle." I also collect unusual names. "Hedwig" was a saint; "Dumbledore" is an Old English word for bumblebee; "Snape" is a place in England.

Q Do you have an actual floor plan for Hogwarts?

A It would be difficult for the most skilled architect to draw owing to the fact that the staircases and rooms keep moving. However, I have a very vivid mental image of what it looks like.

(Excerpted from www.scholastic.com/harrypotter)

Harry's History: A Time Line

Book 1: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Harry discovers that he's a wizard and leaves his horrible Muggle (non-magical) aunt and uncle to attend Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry returns to Hogwarts as a second-year student and must track down and stop the evil magician who is turning students to stone.

Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Sirius Black, a wizard once found guilty of committing terrible crimes, has escaped from prison, and everyone suspects he's out to end Harry Potter's life.

Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Harry continues his wizard education in his fourth year at Hogwarts and reaches new heights in the fast-paced airborne game of Quidditch.

Writers Revise

Ask your students how long they think it takes J.K. Rowling to write a Harry Potter book. Explain that the books they buy or check out of the library are often the result of years of work, and that it took J.K. Rowling five years to write the first Harry Potter book! One reason the process takes so much time is that good writers do more than one draft of a story. They make changes in their chapters, paragraphs, and sentences, both to make the words sound better and to help the story develop properly.

Give students 15 minutes to write a paragraph that envisions Harry traveling on a Muggle airplane for the first time. When the time is up, ask them to think about what they could change to make the writing better. Are there any misspellings or missing words? Have they picked the best adjectives and verbs for what they're trying to say? Did they leave anything out that would make the paragraph more exciting to read? After the students answer these questions, have them revise their original paragraphs. Then have them make a list of what they think improved with their second draft.

Dynamic Dialogue

The term dialogue is most often used to refer to the conversation between characters in books, movies, and plays. In fiction, dialogue is used to advance the plot and to reveal what characters are thinking and feeling. The words Harry, his friends, and teachers use when they speak to one another also help paint a clearer picture of their characters. The gentle giant Hagrid, for example, speaks in less-than-proper English, which makes him stand out from the other adults in the book. We infer that Snape is mean-spirited, if fairly harmless, from the nasty things he often says to Harry.

Break the class into groups of twos or threes. Choose a passage of dialogue from one of the Harry Potter hooks that occurs between two or three characters, and have groups act out the conversation. Have the partners ask each other the following questions about what this dialogue means to the story. Afterward, ask the groups to write their own dialogue, specifically a conversation that these Harry Potter characters might have.

1. What do you learn in this passage of dialogue?

2. Why do you think the author chose to relay this information in dialogue as opposed to narrative?

3. What are the differences in the way these characters speak?

4. What are the things you assume about each character according to the way he or she speaks?

Punctuation Station

Have your students fix the grammar and punctuation in the following excerpt from page 301 in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic):

"Gryffindor hadn't won the Quidditch Cup since the legendary Charlie Weasley (Rons second oldest brother had been Seeker But Harry doubted whether any of them even Wood wanted to win as much as he did. The enmity between Harry and Malfoy was at it's highest point ever. Malfoy was still smarting about the mud-throwing incident in Hogsmeade and was, even more furious that Harry had somehow wormed his way out of punishment. Harry hadnt forgotten Malfoys' attempt to sabotage him in the match against Ravenclaw but it was the matter of Buckbeak that made him most determined to beat Malfoy in front of the entire school."

Fantasy Resources

If your students like fantasy, the Harry Potter series is a good choice. There are also other books and series in the fantasy genre that they might enjoy!

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis (HarperCollins, 1994)

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)

The Once and Future King, by T.H. White (Putnam Publishing, 1996)

The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (Aladdin, 1999)

Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien Houghton Mifflin, 1999)

Half Magic, by Edward Eager, et al (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999)

Time Warp Trio XYZ, by Jon Scieszka (Viking, 1991)