Posted by Anne LeVeque on 9/22/99 from 207.197.129.139:
Because this is not about AR, please email your responses to me.
I am posting this here because I know you are a (mostly) sane bunch
and have a wealth of literary knowledge.
I will be writing a piece on the Harry Potter series for our pre-Christmas
children's books reviews. I need to hear from my UK friends about a
genre of books I am unfamiliar with. In discussions in other places
on the web, comparisons have been made of the Harry Potter series with
a genre of British children's literature referred to as 'boarding-school
stories.' The gist of the discussion is that Rowling has taken this
genre and combined it with the fantasy genre to make a unique combination.
Can you summarize for me this boarding-school genre? Is it still going
strong, or is it considered obsolete? For those of you who have read
Harry Potter, is it a fair comparison? Are the Potter books better or
worse than the boarding-school stories? Any other comments are welcome,
although I think we exhausted the 'translation into American' topic in
a previous thread. Rowling will be here next month and I hope to be
able to talk to her and ask her about that topic.
Thank you for your help, and please forgive me for posting an off-topic
post!
Anne LeVeque
aleveque@nccbuscc.org