Shafer book about Harry Potter

[Steve Vander Ark <vderark@BCCS.ORG>]

Someone recently mentioned a book published by Beacham as a resource for
teachers about the Harry Potter series. Their impressions of the book were
very positive. In the interest of fairness, I thought I point out that there
is a strong contrary opinion being voiced by teachers and readers of the
series. Here's an example of a mini-review I read recently:

<beginning of review>

I bought Schafer's book over eBay and received it yesterday. Ugh!
The prose is choppy and frequently ungrammatical, but even worse are
the numerous mistakes of fact. It made me wonder if she had even read
the books; she certainly hadn't taken the time to re-check her
statements or to proofread the manuscript.

One thing that I did enjoy were the belly laughs she unintentionally
provides with howlers such as: "Pettigrew's missing finger symbolizes
his inability to make his point effectively." (p. 66)

I'd be very careful about using this book as a teaching resource
because of the numerous errors and the extremely poor writing. Even
the youngest HP fans will notice the factual mistakes, and I'm sure
that more than a few 6th graders can write better prose than is
evidenced here.

<end of review>

This doesn't mean that you can't get worthwhile information from this
resource, providing you know the books well enough to pick and choose what's
valid. And this books strikes me as being very much like that recently
published biography of Rowling that was so poorly done, full of factual
errors and ridiculous hyperbole. I think some of these hastily produced
books written to try to cash in on The Latest Thing are not worth spending a
lot of time and money on. There's better material than this available for
free on the web.

Steve Vander Ark
Library Media Specialist
Byron Center Christian School
Byron Center, Michigan

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