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Saturday Morning News

What's the Big Deal About Harry Potter?

Aired July 8, 2000 - 8:23 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the fourth Harry Potter book is selling, well, you know the story, like magic. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" went on sale at midnight across the U.S. and in Great Britain and as we've been telling you repeatedly, it is causing quite a sensation. So, why all the mania surrounding the Harry Potter series?

Let's turn now to Jenny Brown. She is a children's book review editor with "Publisher's Weekly" and she joins us from our New York bureau. Jenny, good to have you with us.

JENNY BROWN, "PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY": Thanks, Miles. It's great to be here.

O'BRIEN: All right. You're a reviewer. You've obviously seen the book, haven't you?

BROWN: No, I haven't. We're under the same embargo as everyone else and we'll get our copies this morning.

O'BRIEN: Are you anxious to dive into all 700 pages of this tome?

BROWN: Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: Now, you've read the previous three, right?

BROWN: Yes, I have.

O'BRIEN: And a lot of people are saying this is a great piece of children's literature, actually, literature in general. Would you go along with that?

BROWN: I would go along with that. I think that, I actually met a girl the other day who did get a copy of one of the books and she said it's the best one yet. And certainly we have all felt that each book has been better than the one before.

O'BRIEN: Hmmm. You know, I've been kind of proud of my 7-year- old. He's kind of dived into this series and that's, you know, it's kind of, for a 7-year-old, that's tough. Seven hundred pages, though, I'm not sure I'm going to encourage him to do that. Do you think that this is going to skew to a little older audience?

BROWN: I don't know. I think that if ever a child would be committed to completing a 700 page book, this would be the one.

O'BRIEN: Really?

BROWN: Yes.

O'BRIEN: What is it about the themes in Harry Potter that you think, you know, kind of resonate with children?

BROWN: Well, I think that everybody loves the idea of waking up one day and finding out that they're extraordinary and that's really what happened to Harry in book one. And as the books have continued, we've found out just how special he is. Each book adds to the excitement.

O'BRIEN: Yeah, I think the thought of children having some power over adults is a great thought, isn't it?

BROWN: Well, sure.

O'BRIEN: Yeah. Sure. Why not? All right, let's put this thing in perspective.

BROWN: Why not?

O'BRIEN: We've been talking about all the superlatives. There's this initial printing of, I don't know, what is it, it's in excess of four million copies when you look at the global distribution. That's a tremendous number of books.

BROWN: Yes, it is. It's the highest print run in the trade publishing history.

O'BRIEN: And the chances of it being a bomb are, what, slim and none?

BROWN: I would say none.

O'BRIEN: It's already a done deal.

BROWN: That's right. We already have, we already know that Amazon had well over 300,000 preorders as of yesterday and Borders and Barnes and Noble were coming fairly close to that figure combined. So I think that it's pretty well a done deal.

O'BRIEN: And three more to come, right?

BROWN: And three more to come, that's right.

O'BRIEN: All right. Jenny Brown reviews children's literature for "Publisher's Weekly." Thanks for being with us out of our New York bureau this morning.

BROWN: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: And this final note. In the interests of full disclosure, Time Warner, which owns CNN, also owns the marketing rights to those Harry Potter products which will be on a shelf near you soon.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

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