The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials - Softcover

Steve Vander Ark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1571431748 ISBN 13: 9781571431745

Publisher: Rdr Books, 2009

Synopsis

This unauthorized guide to the popular series by author J.K. Rowling is a 368 page companion work perfect for the curious reader who wants to know more about these remarkable books. Extensive new commentary, which does not appear on Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon website (www.hp-lexicon.org) adds to the fun of reading this reference work. Written by the founder and editor of the world-renowned Harry Potter Lexicon website, which attracts 25 million visitors each year, Steve Vander Ark's definitive encyclopedia is a popular and scholarly work. The Lexicon has been the subject of more than 1,000 articles from Bombay to Boston. Featured in The New York Times, the London Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Associated Press, USA Today, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and on CNN and Fox News, the Lexicon is written by an outstanding team of reference experts. This indispensable guide is a comprehensive and entertaining work ideal for readers, researchers, students, librarians and academics.

About this title

About the Author

Librarian Steve Vander Ark is creator of the Harry Potter Lexicon website (www.HP-lexicon.org. He frequently keynotes academic conferences on the Harry Potter novels in America, Canada and The United Kingdom. Vander Ark has been interviewed by the New York Times, the New Yorker, the BBC, NBC's Today Show and A&E. A former middle school media specialist he lectures all over the world on the Harry Potter series.

Reviews

Adult/High School–This work serves as a companion to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books (Scholastic). It begins with a brief list of abbreviations that are used throughout the series and an explanation of date usage in the Lexicon. The remainder of the book contains alphabetical entries explaining characters, wizarding terms and phrases, and geographic locations (both real and fictional). Each entry has a brief description and a reference to the first time the term is mentioned in the novels. Character entries also include dates relating to the characters' lives and important positions they may have held, if known. Additional descriptive information beyond the connection to Harry Potter is included in italics when the term's origin outside of that universe is included or if further noncanonical explanation is required. It should be noted that the Lexicon is not a complete Harry Potter encyclopedia as many of the characters' fates remain undisclosed to preserve the experience for first-time readers. That being said, this volume will serve as a quick reference guide for enthusiasts of the series and as a good companion for teens writing fan fiction.–Kelliann Bogan, Colby-Sawyer College, New London, NH END

If ever a book were to test the truism that there's no such thing as bad publicity, it may be this one: an A–Z encyclopedic guide to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter universe, based on a popular Web site created by Vander Ark in 2000, and the center of high-profile litigation. That case settled, the question now becomes online Lexicon v. print. Vander Ark has taken pains not to use Rowling's unique expressions, as the introduction calls that writer's words (for example, the book's readers learn that doxies have a poisonous bite; users of the Lexicon Web site find that doxies have sharp venomous teeth, plus a reference to Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them). Commentary unique to the volume follows many entries (one complaint at trial was that the proposed Lexicon reorganized Rowling's material without adding much information); these range from etymologies to pedestrian analyses (of Harry's reliance on the Expelliarmus spell versus Voldemort's on the Killing Curse: In the end, J.K. Rowling writes Harry as a person not of violence and murder, but of compassion and mercy—of love). The Lexicon Web site still exists as a comprehensive, updated—and free—resource; while the print edition does differ in its content, its advantages are hard to discern. (Jan.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Rdr Books
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1571431748
• ISBN 13: 9781571431745
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 347