16 July 2005

A children's book gets a little attention

Review of some children's book by The New York Times is candidate for pseuds' corner:"
"In addition to being a bildungsroman, of course, the Harry Potter books are also detective stories, quest narratives, moral fables, boarding school tales and action-adventure thrill rides, and Ms. Rowling uses her tireless gift for invention to thread these genres together, while at the same time taking myriad references and tropes (borrowed from such disparate sources as Shakespeare, Dickens, fairy tales, Greek myths and more recent works like "Star Wars") and making them her own."
Don't you like the "bildungsroman, of course"? And if Ms Rowling insists on borrowing tropes and making them her own, she will have to answer to the Edinburgh police.

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