Friday, October 21, 2011

J.K. Rowling Biography

Its hard to imagine a person could become a billionaire just by writing childrens books. The author of the Harry Potter books, J. K. Rowling was the first person to accomplish that. According to U.S. publisher Scholastic, the seven books of the Harry Potter series, had more over 450 million copies sold worldwide and were translated into 68 languages. The books where followed by movies, that expanded the world of Harry Potter to the big screen. Even with this sucusses Rowling still stays true to herself and remembers where she came from. She supports several charities , also has set up one that helps one parent families. It also does studies on the disease of Multiple Sclerosis and reseach the causes and treatment of it. The making of the first Harrry Potter book, wasn't a walk in the park for the author. It was rather such a big deal in her life, that even in the smallest ideas might have gone sometimes unnoticed by readers. J.K. Rowling had put forshadows throughout her life and wrote them in the books. The sense of reality is put into a fictional world she has created, makes the Harry Potter books relatable to a wide range of auidence.

In the summer of 1965, in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, England, Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born. Her mother, Anne, was a lab technician and her father, Peter, worked as an aircraft factory manager. Almost two years later, in a bedroom of the family's home, Joanne's mother gave birth to a her sister, named Diannie.  The sisters were best friends while growing up. Joanne made up stories to entertain her little sister. In the stories they would act out the characters for fun. 'Joanne' was rarely called by anyone, but only when her parents were angry at her, they had used her first name. She was instead called by her nickname, "Jo". When she was six years old, she had written her first story, called Rabbit. It was about a rabbit that had gotten sick with the measles and had the company of visitors, one of which was a giant bee, who's name was Miss Bee.

During Joanne's youth, she had moved twice, once at four and the other at nine. The second time she had moved wasn't as enjoyable as the first. The change from happy and relaxing days playing with her close friends Ian and Vikki Potter, to having to go through the death of one of her grandparent's, was difficult at a young age. This incident had affected her when she attended her new school in Tutshill. Her teacher Mrs. Morgan had given her a test on the first day of school, which Joanne got all the wrong answers. She placed Jo in the "stupid row". She also was being made fun of by her peers. They had giving her nicknames like Rolling Pin and Rolling Stone. Although she had a hard time throughout school, Joanne took pleasure in reading and writing. Stories by the authors, Paul Gallico, Noel Streatfield, Edith Nesbit and C.S. Lewis, were a few favored by Joanne in her childhood. Her most favorite author was activist, Jessica Mitford, she had become Joanne's heroine. In her teenage years, Joanne's mother became sick and she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the of thirty-five. Even though her mother was ill, Joanne was still making good grades. She became head girl at the last year of her high school. She went to the University of Exeter and majored in French and literature.

The dream of becoming a writer was momentarily out of reach, for Joanne, she didn't have the willingness to get her stories published. She took classes to become a bilingual secretary. Even though she didn't like being a secretary , it was a job that could pay the bills. Later on, she managed to get job at Amnesty International, where she reached human-rights abuses in French-speaking Africa. A couple years pasted by when she was asked to move in with her boyfriend to Manchester. She decided to live with him and after looking at apartments in Manchester, Joanne had taken a long train ride back to London, where she had the idea of a young orphaned boy named, Harry Potter. She was imagining a wizarding world and creating characters without a pen to write with and was too shy to ask for one. By the time she arrived at her apartment, she jotted down the inspiring ideas on paper. While she worked at Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Rowling tried to get every chance she could, to continue writing more to the Harry Potter story.  A couple months later on the day of December 30th, 1990, she gotten a call from her father; mother had died from multiple sclerosis. Joanne was always sad by her mother's death. She regrets not telling her about the Harry Potter story.

She felt like had to get away from the emotional heartache and so she packed up her things when she got excepted a job as an English teacher in Portugal, where she meet and married journalist, Jorge Arantes. They had one daughter named, Jessica Isabel, but shortly after, their marriage ended. Rowling returned back to Britain where she lived close to her sister, Diannie, in Edinburgh, Scotland.  She decided to share her fiction story of Harry Potter to her sister, who encouraged Joanne to finish writing the book. Rowling, who was a single parent, working part-time and living on welfare, but continued to write for a year. Once she had finished the book, Rowling went to look up agents, where she then had sent out a couple chapters from the book. A book agent, Christopher Little became interest in the book and represented Jo, into getting her book published. After a couple of rejections, she got a offering of $3,600 from Bloomsbury. She was told that she needed to change her name on the cover, because it might discourage boys of not wanting to read a book written by a female. She choose her grandmother's name, Kathleen, which helped made the name of J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone won the British Book Awards' Children's Book of the Year and many other awards as well. In 2001, she married her second husband, Dr. Neil Murray and had two more children a couple years later, whose names are David and Mackenzie Murray. Rowling spent 8 years working on the the next six books for the series. She is currently about to launch a website, so Harry Potter fans can join together in the online community. The site, pottermore.com, will be open to the public on October 31, 2011.


References

Kirk, C. A. (2003). J.K. Rowling: a biography. New York: Greenwood Press.

Gaines, A. (2002). J.K. Rowling. Bear Delaware: Mitchell Lane Publishers.

Chippendale, L. A. (2002). Triumph of the imagination: the story of writer J.K. Rowling. New York, New York: Chelsea House Publishers.


JK Rowling - Biography on Bio.. (n.d.). Bio: Shows, Video, TV Schedule and More on Bio.. Retrieved October 20, 2011, from http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/jk-rowling.html

Rowling, J. (n.d.). J.K.Rowling Official Site. J.K.Rowling Official Site - Harry Potter and more. Retrieved October 20, 2011, from http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/biography.cfm

Hunter, J. (n.d.). J. K. Rowling Criticism. eNotes - Literature Study Guides, Lesson Plans, and More.. Retrieved October 20, 2011, from http://www.enotes.com/j-k-rowling-criticism/rowling-j-k

Imbornoni, A., & Quigley, D. (n.d.). J. K. Rowling Trivia — FactMonster.com. Fact Monster: Online Almanac, Dictionary, Encyclopedia, and Homework Help — FactMonster.com. Retrieved October 20, 2011, from http://www.factmonster.com/spot/harrycreator2.html

Imbornoni, A. (n.d.). J. K. Rowling — FactMonster.com. Fact Monster: Online Almanac, Dictionary, Encyclopedia, and Homework Help — FactMonster.com. Retrieved October 21, 2011, from http://www.factmonster.com/spot/harrycreator1.html

Leung, R. (2009, July 14). The Magic Behind Harry Potter - CBS News. Breaking News Headlines: Business, Entertainment & World News - CBS News. Retrieved October 21, 2011, from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/12/60minutes/main558428.shtml



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