HARRY, A HISTORY

Chronicling ten years of Pottermania, Anelli dishes up a revealing, delicious insider’s view of “small groups of people acting in ways they shouldn’t, doing things they usually wouldn’t, and making the kind of history that, without Harry, they pretty much couldn’t.” As both a journalist and longtime webmistress of the “Leaky Cauldron” fan site, she’s in a unique position to carry it off. Though she didn’t become an active fan until the weary interval between Goblet of Fire (2000) and Order of the Phoenix (2003), she made up for lost time, diving into a whirlwind of networking, press junkets, touring podcasts and, to top it off, encounters with J.K. Rowling that evolved from deer-in-the-headlights hellos at public events to intimate interviews. The author also takes readers onstage with the wizard rock band Harry and the Potters, travels to Georgia for discomfiting conversations with would-be book-banner Laura Mallory and offers her own takes on such fannish topics as fanfic and spoilers, vividly capturing the exhilaration of being part of what was at once a community and a movement. (endnotes, bibliography, introduction by Rowling) (Memoir. 13 & up)