Why Harry's Hot?
1
J. K. Rowling swears she never saw it coming.
J．K．罗琳发誓说自己从来没有过这种预想。
In her wildest dreams, she didn't think her Harry Potter books would appeal to more than a handful of readers.
她做梦也没有想到会有那么多人对她的书感兴趣。
\interview.
“我从来没有指望过有这么多人喜欢它，”在最近的一次访谈中她仍然这样说，
\
“可是，很显然，我大错特错了。
It strikes a chord with an enormous number of people.\
它在许多人心中产生了共鸣。”
That's putting it mildly. 她说得很委婉。
With 35 million copies in print, in 35 languages, the first three Harry Potter books have earned a conservatively estimated $480 million in three years.
《哈利波特》系列丛书的前三册被翻译成了35种语言，已出版3,500万册，据保守估计，这三册书在三年时间里已经赚了四亿八千万美金。
And that was just the warm-up. 而这还只是个开始。
With a first printing of 5.3 million copies and advance orders topping 1.8 million, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth installment of the series,
《哈里波特》系列丛书的第四册《哈利波特与火焰杯》初版530万册，加上高达180万册的订单，
promises to break every bookselling record.
有望创造新的畅销书销售记录。
Jack Morrissey, 12, plainly speaks for a generation of readers
12岁的杰克·莫里西的话很清楚地表达了他们这一代读者的想法。
when he says, \
他说：“《哈利波特》就如同生活，但比生活更美好。”
2
Amazingly, Rowling keeps her several plotlines clear of each other until the end,
让人称奇的是，罗琳让每一册书的情节相互独立，但最后，
when she deftly brings everything together in a cataclysmic conclusion. 她却能够巧妙地把它们衔接起来，形成一个意想不到的结局。
For pure narrative power, 单从叙述能力而言，
this is the best Potter book yet.
《哈利波特与火焰杯》也是《哈利波特》系列丛书中最好的一本。
3
When the book finally went on sale at 12:01 am. Saturday,
当这本书终于在星期六午夜12：01面市时，
thousands of children in Britain and North America rushed to claim their copies.
在英国和北美，成千上万的孩子争相购买。
Bookstores hosted pajama parties, hired magicians and served cookies and punch,
书店举办了睡衣派对，邀请了一些魔术师表演，并提供曲奇饼和潘趣酒，
but nobody needed to lift the spirits of these crowds.
可是没人需要这些，因为人们个个情绪高涨。
In one case, customers made such a big, happy noise that neighbors called the cops.
有一次，顾客们发出了巨大的欢呼声，以致邻居们实在难以忍受而报了警。
At a Borders in Charlotte, N.C., Erin Rankin, 12,
在美国北卡罗来纳州的夏洛特市“边界”连锁书店，12岁的艾琳·兰金
quickly thumbed to the back as soon as she got her copy.
一拿到书就快速翻到最后一页。
“I heard that a major character dies, and I really want to find out who,\she said.
“我听说有一个主角死了，我真的很想知道是谁，”她说。
But minutes later she gave up.
但是几分钟后她放弃了。
“I just can't do it.
“我做不到，
I can't read the end first.\
我不能先看书的结尾。”
4
The only sour note in all the songs of joy over this phenomenon
在对“哈利波特”现象的一路欢歌中，出现的唯一一个不和谐音符
has come from some parents and conservative religious leaders
来自于一些父母和保守的宗教领袖。
who say Rowling advocates witchcraft.
他们认为罗琳在宣扬巫术。
reading of the books has been challenged in 25 school districts in at least 17 states,
至少在17个州的25所学校校区内，阅读《哈利波特》受到了质疑，而
and the books have been banned in schools in Kansas and Colorado.
在堪萨斯州和科罗拉多州的学校里，《哈利波特》系列丛书则被明令禁止。
But that's nothing new, says Michael Patrick Hearn, a children's book scholar and editor of The Annotated Wizard of Oz.
但是作为儿童图书专家和《绿野仙踪》的编辑，迈克尔·帕特里克·赫恩觉得这并不奇怪。
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“无论何种魔法都会被有些人视为邪恶，”他说，
\“《绿野仙踪》就曾经在80年代中期遭到正统派基督教徒们的抨击。” 5
But perhaps the most curious thing about the Potter phenomenon, especially given that it is all about books, is that almost no one has taken
the time to say how good— or bad—these books are.
但是对于“哈利波特”现象最让人感到好奇的事情可能是几乎没有人会花时间去讨论这些书有多 好或者多糟，尤其是当这些评论仅仅涉及书本身的时候。
The other day my 11-year-old daughter asked me if I thought Harry Potter was a classic.
有一天，11岁的女儿问我是否认为《哈利波特》是经典之作，
I gave her, I'm afraid, one of those adult-sounding answers when I said,
我给出了一个恐怕听起来十分成人化的回答，
\
“时间会证明一切的。”
This was not an outright lie.
这不能算是一个彻头彻尾的谎言，
There's no telling which books will survive from one generation to the next.
因为谁也没有办法预测有哪一本书能够代代相传。
But the fact is, I was hedging.
但事实上，我在闪烁其词。
What my daughter really wanted to know was how well J. K. Rowling stacks up against the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson or Madeleine L'Engle.
我女儿真正想知道的是：与罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森和马德琳·英格这一类人相比较，罗琳到 底有多棒。
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I could have told her that I thought they were beautifully crafted works