Absolutely not. Strange situation.

The reason it’s believable is because a lot of what Americans consider to be world building - houses, house captains, school sports, boarding schools - is just British culture stuff that you don’t recognise.

Yeah, this isn’t really accurate. There were very popular YA series around at the time - Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High strike me as two.

American kids especially not realising how much of the book was just British (or more specifically, British boarding school culture) rather than specifically magical.

Boarding school friendship books have always done well in the UK anyway (Enid Blyton, Tom Brown’s School Days).

That plus the fact that there hadn’t been a “fad” phenomenon that was easily marketed for a while in that space.

This. That plus the spin that the publisher put out that “these books were getting kids who didn’t read to read for the first time”. Well, ultimately it did but it was because of the artificial hype than anything specific about the books themselves. Parent heard that these books were very popular, non bookish kids liked them - even if that wasn’t true - and bought them.

I read them for school free reading aged 8. I absolutely shouldn’t have and thankfully I was too young and innocent to get most of the really bad incesty stuff.

When I was 11 I got "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.

It absolutely spoke to baby autistic me, and I spent the whole of Christmas day morning engrossed in it.

I finished it by dinner time and was declared to have “wasted and spoiled my present” by - get this - reading it and loving it.

People say she inspired a whole generation of kids to read. Honestly, so much of that was marketing spin by her publishing company.

Those books were a publishing fad, but others came before her and after her. Kids were always reading. They just weren’t all reading the same thing.

she’s not going to get better until she stops getting threatened

I don’t agree with the threats but I also don’t agree that when someone’s existence is being debated openly, they have to be the bigger person.

If you’re an incredibly wealthy woman with all of the prestige and status that JKR has, you can survive a few internet trolls. Just go offline for a while, chill in your mansion, and come back once you have used your immense network or resources to actually form an opinion.

You don’t owe politeness to bigots, honestly, even if it hurts their feelings.

When I was 8 I used to intentionally read books upside down. It was about 50 percent wanting someone to notice and comment, and 50 percent “I read adult books at home and this shit is so boring to my ADHD brain that I have to challenge myself somehow or I’ll die”. Anyway, now I can read upside down fairly well still, which is a completely useless thing to know how to do, but did once come in handy in an escape room involving a mirror.

When I was 8 I used to intentionally read books upside down. It was about 50 percent wanting someone to notice and comment, and 50 percent “I read adult books at home and this shit is so boring to my ADHD brain that I have to challenge myself somehow or I’ll die”. Anyway, now I can read upside down fairly well still, which is a completely useless thing to know how to do, but did once come in handy in an escape room involving a mirror.

I would probably have died at birth. I was born en caul though so that’s considered to be lucky and my mum would likely have at least got some cash from a sailor for that.