I'm excited to share that my daughter and I are now into the 2nd Harry Potter book! Even better, the audio on hold is now available so my commute to campus will help my progress (and the 4-hours I will be in the car tomorrow when I dive to Ft. Wayne and back for a presentation :) What I wanted to point out this week is the use of transitions. In a book series, the author has a difficult task, which is recapping the story from the previous book(s). It's been a while since I've read books in a series. I found Rowling is a master and embedding the history of the story within the first few chapters of the book.
In chapter 2, Harry gets a warning from a house elf named Dobby. Dobby talks in third person-kind of like Elmo in Sesame Street. Rowling is able to weave it the tension between Harry and the "you know who" (aka Voldemort) that began in the first book and will continue through the plot of this narrative.
"“Dobby heard tell,” he said hoarsely, “that Harry Potter met the Dark Lord for a second time, just weeks ago . . . that Harry Potter escaped yet again.”
Here you can see that this opens up the conversation to revisit the climax in the first story. Well, Dobby has a warning. Harry is NOT to go back to Hogwarts because bad misfortune is lurking. This sets the tension and now the plot thickens!
On another note, for anybody who has read the series, Isn't the Weasley family just hilarious!
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