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  Who Is

  J. K. Rowling?

  Who Is

  J. K. Rowling?

  An Unauthorized Biography

  By Pam Pollack and Meg Belviso

  Illustrated by Stephen Marchesi

  Grosset & Dunlap

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  To Meg, my partner, whose creative genius I will always respect—PP

  To all the great friends I’ve made in Harry Potter fandom—MB

  For Chris and Alex, ten years on—SM

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

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  Text copyright © 2012 by Pamela D. Pollack and Margaret Dean Belviso. Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Stephen Marchesi. Cover illustration copyright © 2012 by Nancy Harrison. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012001406

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57562-8 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  Contents

  Who Is J. K. Rowling?

  Make-Believe

  A Flying Car

  On the Move

  First Draft

  The Slush Pile

  Pottermania

  Challenges!

  Truly Magical

  Timelines

  Bibliography

  Who Is

  J. K. Rowling?

  Do you know what a Muggle is? Do you know how to get to Platform 9 ¾? Do you have a favorite Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Bean?

  Muggles, Platform 9 ¾, and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans were all created by one person: J. K. Rowling.

  Jo, as she has been called since she was little, always wanted to be a writer. But being a writer would not be easy. What if no one wanted to buy her stories? So after she finished school in her early twenties, she got a job as a secretary in London, England. Jo made enough money to pay her bills.

  Every day she filed papers and made copies. The next day was always the same as the last. But in her heart, she was still a writer. In her spare moments, she typed stories on her computer. She scribbled the names of imaginary people and places on the backs of papers. The stories didn’t earn her any money. Still, she couldn’t stop writing them.

  UNITED KINGDOM

  Writing stories also let Jo forget about the sad things in her life. Like her mother being very sick.

  One weekend Jo took a trip to Manchester, a city in northern England. She was going to move there, and she needed a place to live. She had a long train ride back to London. She stared out the window, thinking of nothing.

  Suddenly a picture of a boy popped into her head. He had round glasses and a scar shaped like a lightning bolt.

  Jo reached into her bag. She wanted to write down everything about him. But she didn’t have a pen. She turned back to the window and thought more about the boy. He was a wizard, but he didn’t know it. He lived with a family who was not his real family. They kept his magic a secret. They hoped to squash it out of him. But the boy’s magic was too strong.

  As the train sped through the English countryside, more people crowded into Jo’s head. They were people the boy knew. There was a ghost named Nearly Headless Nick. And a best friend with red hair. And a clever girl named Hermione.

  By the time Jo reached London, she had a whole new world in her head. One day, she hoped, she could write a book about it. When she got home she found a pen. She pulled out a notebook. On the first page she wrote the name of the boy with the lightning bolt scar.

  His name was Harry Potter.

  Chapter 1

  Make-Believe

  Joanne Rowling always loved trains. Maybe it was because her parents met on a train. It was a chilly day, and her mother, Anne, said she was cold. A stranger named Peter offered her his coat. A year later they were married.

  Jo was born at Yate General Hospital on July 31, 1965, in Gloucestershire, England. Two years later she had a little sister named Diana, or Di.

  Jo made up stories to tell her little sister. In one story, Di fell down a rabbit hole. Luckily the family of rabbits who lived in the hole fed her strawberries. As they got older, Jo and Di played games. Their favorite was the cliff game. In that game, Jo dangled from the top stair of the staircase. She pretended she was on a cliff. She pleaded with Di to rescue her before she fell. But Di never helped. Finally Jo would fall to the floor, “dead.” Then they would start all over again. Only this time Di would be the one hanging off the cliff.

  When they weren’t playing games, Jo and Di were often fighting. During one fight, Jo threw a battery at her sister, leaving a scar just above her eyebrow.

  “I didn’t mean to hit her,” Jo explained to her mother. “I thought she would duck.” But this excuse didn’t stop her mother from being angrier than Jo had ever seen her.

  When Jo was nine, her family moved to a little village called Tutshill. Tutshill sits on the eastern bank of the River Wye. It is also near a big forest called the Forest of Dean. Perhaps even better than the river and the forest was an old castle on a cliff not far from Jo’s house! It is called the Chepstow Castle.

  CHEPSTOW CASTLE

  IN 1066, WILLIAM OF NORMANDY CROSSED THE CHANNEL FROM FRANCE TO INVADE ENGLAND. ONCE HE BECAME KING, WILLIAM STARTED BUILDING CASTLES ALL OVER ENGLAND. CHEPSTOW WAS THE VERY FIRST CASTLE HE BUILT. IT WAS IN AN IMPORTANT SPOT. THE CASTLE GUARDED THE MAIN RIVER CROSSING FROM ENGLAND INTO WALES. HUNDREDS OF YEARS EARLIER, THE ROMANS HAD A FORT IN THE SAME PLACE. WILLIAM USED BRICKS FROM THE ROMAN FORT IN THE MAIN ARCHWAY OF HIS CASTLE. IT IS THE OLDEST MEDIEVAL CASTLE IN GREAT BRITAIN. IT CONTAINS WHAT IS PROBABLY THE OLDEST MEDIEVAL TOILET!

  Living in the country was a dream come true for Jo’s parents, who were both from London. Her mother was a lab technician. Her father worked at an aircraft engine plant.

  The river, the forest, and the castle gave Jo even more ideas for her stories. So did the many books she read. Some of her favorites were The Little White Horse, a story about a girl who ends a long feud in her magical family, and The Chronicles of Narnia, ab
out a group of children who rule a secret, magical kingdom.

  One thing that Jo didn’t like about Tutshill was her school, Tutshill Primary. Her teacher, Mrs. Morgan, was very strict. As Jo remembered, she seated all the children in her class according to how smart she thought they were. The bright students sat on Mrs. Morgan’s left. The students Mrs. Morgan thought were “dim” sat on her right. On the first day of class, Mrs. Morgan gave everyone a test on fractions. Jo had never studied fractions before. She failed the test. Mrs. Morgan made Jo sit on the “bad” side of the room. In an article called “The Not Especially Fascinating Life So Far of J. K. Rowling,” Jo said she sat “as far right as you could get without sitting in the playground.”

  Jo always remembered how awful she felt that day. She didn’t think the test was fair. Years later, she would write about another teacher, Severus Snape, doing similar things to Harry Potter.

  Jo wasn’t sad to leave Tutshill Primary behind. At 11, she went to Wyedean Comprehensive School. At first Jo was afraid. She’d heard some scary stories about what happened to students there. For instance, she heard that they stuffed new students’ heads down the toilets the first day.

  No one stuck Jo’s head down the toilet at Wyedean. But one of the toughest girls in school did pick a fight with her. Even though Jo was quiet and a good student, she fought back against the bigger girl. She became famous for standing up to the bully. But standing up to the bully came with a price. In “Not Especially,” Jo said that she spent the next few weeks “peering nervously around corners” in case the bully was waiting for her.

  Jo didn’t like fighting in real life. But she loved fighting battles in her imagination. At lunchtime she told her friends stories in which they were the heroes. Made-up adventures, Jo was discovering, could be more fun than the real thing.

  Chapter 2

  A Flying Car

  In many ways, Jo was a lot like Harry’s brainy friend, Hermione Granger. Jo once told a group of students at a school in Montclair, New Jersey, that she herself was “never as clever or as annoying” as Hermione. Yet she could be a know-it-all on the outside while inside she was very insecure. She also got good grades in school like Hermione did.

  Then she discovered a new favorite writer: Jane Austen. Jo loved the way Austen put clues in her books about what was going to happen that the reader didn’t notice until the end. It made her want to read the books over and over again. She tried to learn how to do the same thing in her own stories.

  JANE AUSTEN

  JANE AUSTEN WAS WRITING BOOKS ALMOST TWO HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE J. K. ROWLING STARTED WRITING ABOUT HARRY POTTER. JANE AUSTEN WROTE SIX NOVELS: SENSE & SENSIBILITY, PRIDE & PREJUDICE, MANSFIELD PARK, EMMA, PERSUASION, AND NORTHANGER ABBEY. ALL SIX HAVE BECOME CLASSICS AND HAVE BEEN MADE INTO MOVIES—SOME MORE THAN ONCE.

  JANE AUSTEN WAS JO’S FAVORITE AUTHOR. JO’S FAVORITE BOOK WAS EMMA, WHICH SHE CALLED “THE MOST SKILLFULLY MANAGED MYSTERY I’VE EVER READ.” IT WAS THE SAME KIND OF MYSTERY THAT JO WOULD LATER WRITE HERSELF, A STORY WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTER COMES TO REALIZE THAT SHE HAS THE WRONG IDEA ABOUT EVERYTHING. THE MAIN CHARACTER—AND THE READER—MUST GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING IN ORDER TO SEE THINGS THE WAY THEY REALLY ARE. HARRY DOES THE SAME THING IN HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE. HE COMES TO UNDERSTAND THAT PROFESSOR SNAPE WAS NOT HURTING HIM BUT ACTUALLY PROTECTING HIM.

  ONE OF JO’S CHARACTERS—FILCH’S CAT, MRS. NORRIS—IS NAMED AFTER A BUSYBODY IN JANE AUSTEN’S MANSFIELD PARK.

  At fifteen, Jo was still imagining exciting adventures in faraway places. Her own life in Tutshill went on the same as always. Then everything changed. Her mother was sick. Anne had multiple sclerosis, or MS, a disease that damages nerves. There is no cure for MS. Jo’s mother got weaker every day. It was hard seeing her so sick. Jo was especially close to her mother. Her father was often at work so Jo depended on her mother.

  Some people didn’t want to be around her mother because of her illness. Years later, Jo would create a character with an incurable illness in her books. She wanted to show how thoughtless people could be around someone who was very sick.

  Even when Jo was feeling very sad about her mother, she had one friend who could always make her laugh. His name was Seán Harris, and he was the real-life inspiration for Ron Weasley. Besides being loyal and fun, Seán was the first one of Jo’s friends to get a driver’s license. He had a car—a turquoise Ford Anglia. When Jo was feeling down, they would zoom off into the countryside. Jo told Seán about her dreams of being a writer, a secret she had never shared with anyone else. He believed she would be a success.

  Years later, when Jo wrote her second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, she gave Seán’s car a starring role. The car rescues Harry just as it had rescued Jo—only in Jo’s imagination the car could fly.

  If Seán was the inspiration for Ron Weasley, Jo’s teacher John Nettleship was the person who inspired the character of Severus Snape. Mr. Nettleship was strict like Jo’s old teacher Mrs. Morgan. He was also lanky with long, black hair and a sharp tongue, just like Harry’s professor. His chemistry class was full of “bangs and smells,” and it was far from Jo’s favorite. On a report card, he described Jo as “a daydreamer who never answered questions about science and hated taking part in experiments.” Jo much preferred her classes in English and foreign languages to chemistry.

  In her last year at Wyedean, Jo was chosen by her teachers to be Head Girl. This was the highest honor a student could have. The Head Boy and Girl represented the school at events, sometimes making speeches. When teachers were called out of the classroom, the Head Boy and Girl were in charge of keeping other students under control.

  After leaving Wyedean in 1983, Jo attended the University of Exeter. Her favorite subject had always been English literature. But she thought knowing French might lead to a better job after college. So Jo studied French, Latin, and Greek. She even spent a year in Paris as a teaching assistant. But secretly Jo only wanted to write. Her favorite thing about studying languages was learning new words and thinking up names for the characters in her stories, like Voldemort and Malfoy. In French, mort means death, mal means bad, and foy comes from foi which means faith.

  CHARACTER NAMES

  YOU CAN TELL A LOT ABOUT THE HARRY POTTER CHARACTERS FROM THEIR NAMES.

  THE WEASLEY FAMILY—HARRY’S FAVORITE FAMILY IS NAMED AFTER ONE OF JO’S FAVORITE ANIMALS, THE WEASEL.

  REMUS LUPIN—REMUS SHARES HIS FIRST NAME WITH ONE OF TWO MYTHICAL BROTHERS (ROMULUS AND REMUS) WHO WERE RAISED BY A WOLF AND FOUNDED ROME. HIS LAST NAME COMES FROM LUPINE, WHICH MEANS WOLFLIKE.

  FENRIR GREYBACK—THE SERIES’ SECOND WEREWOLF GETS HIS NAME FROM FENRISÚLFR (FENRIS WOLF), A NORSE WOLF GOD.

  SIRIUS BLACK—SIRIUS IS NAMED AFTER THE DOG STAR. VERY FITTING FOR A MAN WHO CAN TURN INTO A DOG!

  ALBUS DUMBLEDORE—ALBUS COMES FROM THE LATIN WORD FOR WHITE. DUMBLEDORE IS AN OLD ENGLISH WORD MEANING BUMBLEBEE. JO NAMED HIM THAT BECAUSE SHE IMAGINED THE OLD HEADMASTER HUMMING TO HIMSELF LIKE A BEE.

  RITA SKEETER—HARRY IS OFTEN ANNOYED BY REPORTER RITA SKEETER. NOT SURPRISING, SINCE SKEETER IS A SLANG WORD FOR MOSQUITO.

  PEEVES—PEEVES THE POLTERGEIST LOVES PLAYING PRANKS AT HOGWARTS. HE’S LIVING UP TO HIS NAME, WHICH MEANS TO IRRITATE.

  Chapter 3

  On the Move

  When Jo graduated in 1987 she moved to Clapham, a neighborhood in South London. For a while she worked as a secretary at Amnesty International, which fights for the fair treatment of people in different countries all over the world. Jo felt like she was helping people in trouble.

  AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

  LIKE HARRY POTTER, JO ALWAYS BELIEVED PEOPLE SHOULD BE TREATED FAIRLY—EVER SINCE THE DAYS WHEN SHE STOOD UP TO THE SCHOOL BULLY OR GOT ANGRY AT HER TEACHERS. AMNESTY IS AN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION THAT FIGHTS FOR THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS, ESPECIALLY FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN PUT IN JAIL FOR THEIR BELIEFS. IN 1979, FOR INSTANCE, PEOPLE IN ARGENTINA WHO CRITICIZED THE NEW GOVERNMENT STARTED TO DIS
APPEAR. AMNESTY WORKED TO TELL EVERYONE WHAT WAS GOING ON AND STOP IT. THE GROUP ALSO STEPS IN ANYWHERE CHILDREN ARE MISTREATED OR DENIED AN EDUCATION.

  Still, Jo’s favorite part of the workday was her lunch hour. She could concentrate completely on her stories then. It was just like her days at Wyedean. Only now, instead of telling stories to her friends, she wrote down the stories. She tried writing several novels for adults but never finished them.

  Back home in Tutshill, her mother wasn’t getting any better. Jo worried about her a lot. She decided she needed a change. She wanted to leave London for someplace new. She chose Manchester, a city in northern England. It was a bit farther away from her family, but she could still visit them often. On the weekends she took the train from London to Manchester to look at flats, which are what people in England call apartments. It was on one of these weekend train trips in 1990 that she got the idea for her greatest story yet: Harry Potter.

  Once Harry “fell into her head,” Jo could think about little else. Her new flat in Manchester was full of notes about Harry and his world. One evening Jo had a big fight with her boyfriend. She went to a nearby pub, a place where people gathered to eat and drink. Alone at a table, she thought about how satisfying it would be to smack something at her boyfriend’s head. Maybe a big iron ball. Perhaps while flying on a broomstick! Jo had just created a new game that only wizards could play. She called it Quidditch.