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"When it was early days for Harry Potter, I was on a plane to America reading Harry Potter and I looked across the aisle and there was this adult reading it - but he was reading a copy with an adult cover," she recalls.ĭr Smith says many adults will now "happily identify" as Harry Potter fans.
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The director of the National Centre for Australian Children's Literature at the University of Canberra, Belle Alderman, says the series was the first to blur the line between children's and adult's books. "In every book become a bit more mature, the problems become a bit more complicated."īut it wasn't just young people reading Harry Potter. "One reason why it is a phenomenon is because it could take them through so much of their lives in a way most other books for children and young people can't. "So many Harry Potter fans now in their 20s and 30s have such a great attachment to it because every year when they were younger another book would come out," Dr Smith says, adding that, in the same way the books brought back fantasy, they also popularised series again. The series element, too, helped keep Harry Potter in children's lives. "Now we see so many series, whether they're based on more Gothic themes like Twilight or set in a future dystopia like the Hunger Games," Dr Smith says. That magic element would prove to have quite an impact, with fantasy becoming the dominant genre in children's literature. Harry Potter fans queue two days before the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. "Nobody wanted to touch fantasy stories - they were seen as old-fashioned," she says. To put in plainly, Harry Potter was not widely expected to be a hit, with JK Rowling receiving "loads" of rejection letters before finding success.įantasy stories had fallen out of favour by the 1990s, senior lecturer in literature at Deakin University Michelle Smith says, with popular books firmly rooted in reality. In the 20 years since the first novel was published, the world of Harry Potter has grown to be worth more than $25 billion.īut what was it about this skinny, bespectacled 11-year-old with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead that so captured the imagination - and wallets - of children and adults around the world? 'Nobody wanted to touch fantasy stories' The series has been translated into 73 languages and adapted into eight hugely popular films, as well as spurring spin-off books and films and a lucrative body of merchandise. The books have collectively sold more than 500 million copies, making them the best-selling series of all time - with the final four novels consecutively setting records for the fastest selling book in history. Glowing as they were, those early reviews almost undersell the eventual success of the book and its six sequels. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone turns 20 this year.