J K Rowling Bids Goodbye to Harry Potter

Monday, July 23, 2007

“The two men approached out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow moonlit lane.” This is how “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” opens…the seventh and last book of the series for JK Rowling.

Rowling has been tight lipped about the whole release of the seventh installment of the Harry Potter book. So many kids are asking the question, “Will Harry die?” But to find out you will have to read the book. All Rowling will say it, “Harry’s story comes to a definite end in book seven.” (Note: As of Sunday the sales of the book broke Border’s single-day record of 1.2 million copies worldwide.)

When Rowling wrote those final words of the book it felt “like a bereavement.” And she felt terrible for a week. “Finishing is emotional because the books have been so wrapped up with my life. It’s impossible not to finish and look back where I was when I started.”

How did JK Rowling come from being a single mother struggling to being, at 41, worth $1 billion? Joan Kathleen Rowling was a single mom on welfare living in Scotland with her daughter from a previous marriage. She struggled to make ends meet. During this time she started writing a book that she got from and idea she had while traveling on a train from Manchester to London in 1990.

By the summer of 2000, the first three Harry Potter books were out. They had earned about $480 million American, and had 35 million copies out in 35 different languages. A film version of the first book came out in 2001 and shattered all previous box office records. It ended up becoming the top grossing movie of 2001.

In 2001, Rowling got married again and had two more children.

Rowling says this experience has been one of a lifetime. But the real question remains, is she really done with Harry Potter? J. K. Rowling says, “I can never write anything as popular again. I’ll writer what I really want to write, and if it’s something similar that’s OK, and if it’s something very different, that’s OK.”