Tamora Pierce has heard the question so often that it’s a wonder she does not, in a fit of pique, borrow her characters’ magical skills to turn the interrogator into a hedgehog, a spider or perhaps an especially slimy toad.
But then again, Pierce seems altogether too friendly and cheerful for such pettiness.
“Everywhere I go, it’s ‘Harry Potter this’ and ‘Harry Potter that,'” she says.
Since 1983, when her first novel, “Alanna,” was published, Pierce has mined the same vein as J.K. Rowling, author of the mind-blowingly successful Harry Potter series, including “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” released a week ago to many critical huzzahs and gravity-defying sales figures. Pierce, too, writes fantasy novels — her characters cast spells, read minds, fight evil and chitchat with animals — aimed at young adult readers.
Thus Pierce is accustomed to the question, “What about Potter?” wherever she goes. And she knows people wonder if the Potter phenomenon has energized other fantasy literature along with it.
The answer, many say, is yes.
The success of the Potter series has not only caused an increase in the number of fantasy and science fiction books published, say industry observers, but also tilted the spotlight toward established authors such as Pierce.
Sharyn November, founder of Firebird, a fantasy publisher, and senior editor at Viking Children’s Books, says, “Harry Potter has been an enormous help to a lot of people. It’s brought attention to wonderful authors such as Tammy [Pierce], Diana Wynne Jones and Lloyd Alexander. They’ve always sold well — but now they’re selling better.”
Kids who polish off Potter are apt to move on to authors such as Garth Nix and Philip Pullman, whose books also construct elaborate alternative universes and feature outlandish but somehow plausible plots.
Jill Morgan, founder of the children’s book publisher Purple House Press, adds, “All fantasy books are definitely helped by Harry Potter.”
No fantasy scribe in her or his right mind, then, would dare diss the most famous pupil at Hogwarts School. Yet it still can be irksome, Pierce concedes, when the first word spoken to her on many occasions isn’t “Hello” but “Potter.”
Or when everybody wants her and her fellow fantasy writers to explain why Rowling’s novels are so hot.
“People who have been in this field 30 or 40 years — even they don’t understand it,” Pierce says. “It’s like `Love Story’ or `Jonathan Livingston Seagull,'” she adds, referring to previous best sellers that, out of the blue, took the world by storm. “You just never know.”
For fantasy authors, the presence of Rowling must make them feel like professional basketball players who laced up their sneakers in the days when Michael Jordan still ruled the court.
Not that Pierce is complaining. The personable author, who lives in New York with her husband but recently visited Chicago to speak at a conference on gifted children, makes a handsome living from her writing. She has thousands of fans all over the world. She enjoys the Potter books — “Hagrid is my spiritual brother, because I’m always bringing home inappropriate animals too” — and welcomes Rowling’s works. “They’ve done a lot of good for all fantasy.”
Her only quarrel with them is the fact that the main character is male. “It bugs me when women writers have male heroes,” Pierce says. Enough male writers employ male heroes, she notes; surely the female writers can offer an alternative. In fact, the author adds, the paucity of female protagonists is what inspired her to write.
“I started writing the kinds of books I wanted to read when I was a kid — girls kicking butt,” she says with a wicked grin. “It was very hard to find female heroes when I was growing up. I had to dig for them.” When it came time to begin her career, “I wanted to write for the girls who don’t necessarily see their role models as Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.”
Pierce has written several series, from the four-volume adventures of Alanna, a girl who becomes a knight, to a series called “The Immortals,” in which an orphan named Daine discovers she can communicate with animals. She also has written quartets called “The Circle of Magic,” “The Protector of the Small” and “The Circle Opens.”
Her work brims with magical adventures, with bold young heroines who battle enemies with quiet confidence and flair. Daine, for instance, is informed early in “Wild Magic” (1992) that monsters may lie in wait on a journey she is undertaking.
Her curt reply: “If I see monsters, I see monsters.” Then she saddles up.
She never condescends to her readers, Pierce says. “This is a very sophisticated audience. This is a very knowledgeable audience.”
Growing interest
It’s a growing audience as well, reports Morgan, whose 3-year-old publishing venture caters to fantasy-seeking kids whose parents remember their own brushes with literary magic.
Purple House Press (www.purplehousepress.com), based in Cynthiana, Ky., publishes some six titles annually, chiefly fantasy books that have gone out of print. Their list includes fantasy classics such as “The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek” (1955), “David and the Phoenix” (1957) and “The Mad Scientists’ Club” series, which began with “The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Cove” (1961). The books tread some of the same ground as the Potter books: They’re well-written, charmingly illustrated, extravagantly imagined volumes that kids adore.
“A lot of the time, I work directly with the authors” of the books, many of whom have watched with dismay as their books faded from public view, Morgan says. “They’re getting recognition later in life.”
Purple House — which distributes its books to bookstores, although Morgan recommends that readers check the Web site for a better selection — soon will publish “The Brothers Lionheart,” a little-known book by Astrid Lindgren, the late Swedish author who created Pippi Longstocking. Lindgren also wrote fantastical adventures without the Pippi character.
November says the idea that kids’ books are easier to write than adult books is a myth. “Teenagers are a much more exacting audience than adults are. You have to hook them right away. They don’t buy a book because it’s in The New York Times Book Review because they’re going to discuss it at a cocktail party. If they read a chapter and it doesn’t do it for them, it’s `Bye.’
`A higher standard’
“The work comes up to a higher standard [than adult literature].”
November also bristles at the charge that writers and publishers who write fantasy and science fiction books for kids are slumming. “We’re always asked, `When are you going to work on real books?’ My stock answer is, `Do you ask pediatricians when they’re going to start treating real patients?'”
Potter’s popularity has only made things better, she believes. “Fantasy literature is in a wonderful place right now. I’m sure some of these books have changed people’s lives. It’s an awesome responsibility.”
Pierce agrees. “When a fan comes up to you and says, `Your book changed my life,’ you know it’s true — because books do change lives.”
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More reading that casts spell
If you ripped through “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” tore through J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” crashed your way across C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia” and are still panting for more, these authors will make your summer magical.
The books listed here are just a smattering of the authors’ works:
Tamora Pierce: “Street Magic”; “Shatterglass.”
Philip Pullman: “The Golden Compass”; “The Amber Spyglass.”
Patricia A. McKillip: “The Changeling Sea”; “The Riddle-Master of Hed.”
Charles de Lint: “The Riddle of the Wren”; “The Dreaming Place.”
Meredith Ann Pierce: “The Darkangel”; “A Gathering of Gargoyles.”
Garth Nix: “Sabriel”; “Lirael.”
Lloyd Alexander: “The Black Cauldron”; “The Kestrel.”
Diana Wynne Jones: “Dark Lord of Derkholm”; “A Sudden Wild Magic.”
Roderick MacLeish: “Prince Ombra.”
