Screaming Fans Greet J.K. Rowling's Open Book Tour
By Sonja Bolle -- Publishers Weekly, 10/15/2007 2:30:00 PM
J.K. Rowling kicked off her Open Book Tour in Los Angeles on Monday, October 15, her first appearance in the U.S. following the publication of the record-shattering last volume in the Harry Potter series. The Kodak Theater, site of the annual Academy Awards, was the proper locale for the event, as 1600 schoolchildren—40 carefully selected students from 40 Los Angeles schools—screamed at Rowling’s appearance onstage as if she were all four Beatles. Or, to be more contemporary, as if she were Hannah Montana.
When Rowling announced from the crimson-and-gilt throne onstage that she was going to read a section she called “goodbye to the Dursleys,” there was a collective groan. “I didn’t want to read anything too revealing,” she explained. “And I like this bit.” If the crowd had expected a more action-packed selection, she soon had them in the palm of her hand. The emotion of her chosen passage electrified the theater, which responded with a long “aawwww…. ” to Dudley Dursley’s inarticulate leavetaking with his cousin. They also gave Rowling a big laugh on a tension-releasing funny line. After the reading, Rowling took questions from 12 members of the audience, then signed books Scholastic had provided for all 1600.
The press was given only this one chance at Rowling; the other stops on the tour—New Orleans on Oct. 18 and New York on Oct. 19—will be strictly for schoolchildren and fans selected in a sweepstakes. In 20 minutes with reporters, she had no answer to the question of what she’s working on now, but said she is not turning immediately to the Harry Potter encyclopedia that has often been mentioned among fans. “It’s the first time in 10 years that I have no deadline,” she said, adding that she is enjoying having time with her children. “But I will always write.”
Speaking about the difficulty of keeping Harry’s secrets all those years, Rowling told a story about visiting the Harry Potter movie set one day while she was working on the last book. “I told Daniel [Radcliffe, the actor who plays Harry] that Dumbledore was giving me trouble, so I thought I’d take a break and come visit, and he cried: ‘I thought Dumbledore was dead!’ ”
To win her spot at the Kodak Theater, Janel Pineda of Emerson Middle School wrote an essay about how the Harry Potter books changed her attitude about reading. In it, the sixth grader voiced the most often-cited reason that parents and teachers are grateful to J.K. Rowling: “I was intimidated by long books, but my friend said I should try Harry Potter. My reading improved from a fifth-grade to an eighth-grade level.”
