When I was an eager young bookworm of about nine or 10, there were no novels about divorce, disability or single parenthood. We had to make do with either wishy-washy Narnia or the grittier and more beguiling concoctions of Alan Garner or Leon Garfield.
And if you really insisted on a touch of the everyday, Noel Streatfield’s A Vicarage Family was probably as close as you came. But now Jacqueline Wilson and Anne Fine have dragged life’s all-too-real hurdles into childhood reading. So it’s almost funny that in such issue-based, politically aware times, the children’s novel that most totally fired everyone’s imagination is simply a rehash of the oldest ideas. And I mean, the very creakiest old storylines. I mean the dusty old classics that even our parents knew and dog-eared.
“Just imagine,” you can almost hear some publisher saying, hearing cash registers ring, “if you could write something that was a combination of just about every children’s classic you’ve ever heard of.” “Might be a touch tricky,” you can hear the poor old writer nervously retorting, “to cram all those in things into a single volume.”
But JK Rowling has proved them wrong. She has simply taken every single book you ever read as a child and rolled them into one big multicoloured whole. Yet, for me, it took Chris Columbus’s brilliantly engaging film to point this out. And yes, the film is wonderful — a lavish riot of magic and adventure. All of Rowling’s quirky ideas — staircases that suddenly swing in different directions, oil paintings whose subjects move and speak — are realised with heart-stopping, million-dollar effect.
Everything is done on a big scale and it works. The film has pace, beauty and a grandiose John Williams score reminiscent of every adventure movie you’ve ever seen. A clutch of famous names (John Cleese, Alan Rickman, Julie Walters, John Hurt) appear in crunchy character roles and the young newcomers playing the three kids — Harry, Ron and Hermione –make them glow with real warmth and genuine humour, something I found lacking in the books.
I have to confess that as far as I know, with the noble exception of Mr Davies (my daughter’s Year Six teacher), I am the only human on the planet who does not really rate the Harry Potter books. I’ve really tried to like them, but I’m constantly underwhelmed. I find the writing terminally unsatisfying — stiff, old-fashioned and utterly lacking in charm or elegance. The plots alarmingly jump from one scene to another without proper motivation. There’s practically no characterisation. I try to concentrate yet find I’m glazing over.
But my kids, like everyone else’s, adore them. Now at last I understand why. Here’s what Rowling has done. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone begins in a normal street (the Dursleys’ nasty little semi in Privet Lane) and has strange winds and strange things (letters and owls) falling from the sky. In Mary Poppins, it’s umbrellas and nannies. Meanwhile, this is a household where the poor relation is treated cruelly and made to live in a cupboard under the stairs. That’s right, Harry is a young, male Cinderella and the Dursleys will stop at nothing to prevent him going to Hogwart’s (the Ball).
If that wasn’t enough, it turns out that Harry has a saintly dead mother (that’s Oliver Twist) and he’s off to be apprenticed to another scrawny, cryptic, bearded guy (every Oliver needs a Fagin). Not only has the world been awaiting and expecting him to grow up, return and rescue them from evil (those guys from Narnia), but also, exactly like the Wart in The Sword in the Stone, his magic wand finds him. How odd, says John Hurt as Harry grips the Right Wand, that this is the one you’re destined for. Come out of the lake, Excalibur, all is forgiven.
It doesn’t stop there. In order to board the Hogwart’s Express, Harry must get on to Platform 93/4 and the only way to do this is to melt through a brick wall into another world. Just like Alice, he valiantly pushes through to the other side. And what pleasures await him there. He learns to fly in a scene that is every bit as breathtaking as Disney’s Peter Pan. He then encounters a magical mirror (Snow White); a game of chess, strange doors and keys (Alice again); and, just in case we worried that Brazil and Blyton were being left out, a boarding school where everyone wears nice grey jumpers and stripy ties, quads are blanketed in snow and turrets gleam in the stiff-upper-lipped English moonlight (everything from Bunter to Molesworth).
But I’m not criticising Rowling for this or even accusing her of lack of imagination. Far from it — I’m in awe. It’s genius. How could she have the panache to take all of these existing threads and tie them into such an audaciously satisfying whole? Is this why I found it all so unsurprising and derivative? Was it ever supposed to be anything else?
And OK, Rowling has wisely added a whole new dimension of her own. It’s very much rehashed for today’s more blasé and sophisticated electronic child. People fall down unconscious, flames crackle, cuts bleed blood. Harry’s parents were murdered. In other words, it’s not for your five-year-old. Some of the quite terrifying moments of almost-destruction in the film certainly merit its parental guidance status.
I also suspect some of Harry Potter‘s success may be due to the fact that it’s a brilliantly anarchic slap in the face to today’s anxious, guilty parent. These are kids set free. They’re at boarding school. They may be unloved, brave, alone, but they’re crucially empowered by magic — and that’s all they need. They don’t get parental quality time, they get three-headed dogs, a snarling Alan Rickman and vomit-flavoured jelly beans. Child heaven!
When Mary Poppins descended from the Kensington clouds, her mission was to remind Jane and Michael’s father to love them. When the wizards swoop down on the Muggles, it’s to remind Harry that his mother loved him but he must carry on without her, a tougher message for tougher times. In the cinema no one seemed to notice. Laughter was frequent, excitement audible. But I, who have always seen film as the novel’s poor, parasitical relation, am for once glad that a movie has improved on the book.