The Greatest Stories Ever Re-Told: Adaptation and the Public Domain

It doesn't take long in someone's acquaintance of me for them to realize that among my foundational loves are fairy tales and musicals. This means, naturally, that I am a huge Disney nerd, because how can you not be when you love both fairy tales and musicals? Disney practically is the reason I fell so hard for both those things as a child.

I think a lot about Disney movies - if that wasn't abundantly obvious from previous blog posts, like where I ranked Every Best Animated Feature Winning Film - but more than that, I think a lot about the source material these movies were based on. Overwhelmingly, Disney films adapt well-known stories, such as fairy tales, often stamping them with such a general sense of Disney-ness, that they become the de facto versions of those stories in our heads.

For example, what animals do you first picture when you think of Cinderella getting help? 

Is it mice? 

Because in the Brother's Grimm version, it's doves who serve as her friends and guardians. Cinderella, in fairness, is a very popular story structure, with countless versions around the world and an array of animals that help her. But that's the thing - it could have been fish or lizards as easily as mice, yet Jacques and Gus-Gus are the ones that jump to mind for anyone raised on Disney films. 

I like to imagine this is a Marvel movie and
in a post-credits scene, Cinderella asks the bluebirds
to please peck out her step-sister's eyes.
For the Grimm Brother's purists! Real fans KNOW!

But it's not just the fairy tales Disney has used to build its collection of classic movies. Everything from Bambi, to The Aristocats, to Pocahontas has some children's book, short story collection, or grievous misunderstanding of American history to pull inspiration from. The first full-length Disney film that could be considered an "original" story is probably The Lion King. I'm inclined to say the development of that movie was too chaotic for it to be thought of as actually "based" on Hamlet (frankly, they could have saved themselves years of trouble if it was), but the studio did gradually note the similarities as the film came together. For those keeping score, that's thirty-one Disney movies before anyone bothered trying to write an original screenplay. And it was several MORE years before anyone wrote anything original, good and not resembling Shakespeare - Lilo and Stitch, Disney's 42nd feature-length animated film. That movie's a trailblazer, man.

Granted, not all Disney movies are based on fairy tales. In fact, there's a very enjoyable film called Saving Mr. Banks about the rather arduous journey Walt Disney had to go down in order to convince author P. L. Travers to sell the film rights to her beloved children's books, the Mary Poppins series, to his studio. Disney used to purchase the rights to contemporary novels frequently, including 101 Dalmatians and The Rescuers among their adapted works. I wouldn't mind seeing them try their hands at animating recent books again. If nothing else, I would love to see them do the Prydain Chronicles justice. The books are super charming, but Disney's The Black Cauldron is (unfortunately) a mess.

Still love the design of this poster.

For the majority of their output, however, their animation has focused on older stories. Once copyright expires on a creative work, it enters what is known as the public domain, where no one entity can make legal or monetary claim on the use of a particular work. Copyright laws vary widely around the globe, but they generally protect a work from unlicensed use for some length of time from either the publication date or the author's death. This way, the author of a work enjoys the right to fiscally benefit from that project during their lifetime and has some creative control over how the work is presented to the public. Overall, copyright is a good thing that protects the livelihoods of working artists, but there is something special about the stories in the public domain. Because when a story is old enough to go into the public domain it belongs to everyone.

There have been so many versions of Robin Hood over the years, and it's not just because it's a beloved folk tale. It's because legally, there can be. Ever wondered why Jane Austen remains so popular with people today? Well... there aren't a lot of other famous romantic comedies that absolutely any artist can riff on and then sell their version without paying royalties to someone's estate. Disney gradually became incredibly good at taking these well-known stories and reshaping them for animated film. So good, the techniques they used could be their own blog post. (Foreshadowing?) I think particularly of the Disney Renaissance, when Disney really pivoted away from using copyrighted characters, like they had in earlier decades, and focused instead on their classic fairy tale roots.

Disney is not in the habit of having original ideas. Well, they do so MORE often now, but... is that actually for the better? A good number of their "original" stories are among the most underwhelming Disney movies. Brother Bear and Raya and the Last Dragon are not awful, but I can't shake the feeling they would both be better if they were based on actual indigenous stories rather than a rough smooshing together of various cultural traditions. The best films to come out of the "original story era" like Moana and Encanto might not be pulling from specific stories, but they do at least have much more specific points of inspiration. For instance, Moana teams up with Maui! An actual legendary figure! Arguably, it is still an adaptation, in the same vein of Hercules a generation earlier. (Encanto is a unicorn of a film, but as mentioned, it is specific. It's set in Colombia and doesn't shy away from referencing the country's history with civil war.)

But the bedrock of the Disney brand - one of their most underrated skills - is adaptation. And I cannot overstate how much I freakin' love a good adaptation. Adapting a story across genre of media and generations is an artform, that might make you look like an idiot when it's botched (what moron thought James Franco should play the Wizard of Oz???) but when it's done right, it's just so satisfying. (Oh my heart! Glinda and Elphaba used to be friends!)

They're only angry because they love each other!
(insert crying emoji)

One advantage of adaptation is that it invites the audience to compare various versions of the same story and let them speak in conversation with each other. Wicked, for instance, uses The Wizard of Oz as a jumping off point for the superficiality of how evil is often perceived. In a story where "evil" was seemingly baked into Elphaba's skin color and very name (The Wicked Witch of the West), what hope did she ever have of people treating her otherwise? That kind of barebones morality is a reoccurring feature (problem?) in children's literature, with The Wizard of Oz being just being one of the more blatant examples.

But as in Wicked, in real life, the villain might just be the Wizard himself. Sometimes the person ruining everything for everyone is the seemingly friendly, great and powerful entity that provided you with your first entry point into the story. Sometimes, an over-long Wizard of Oz metaphor turns out to be a segway into me complaining about how public domain law changed in the 70s and went from protecting artists, to just making life difficult for everyone.

The Wizard is Disney. Disney is the bad guy. Wow, what a twist.

Copyright Run Amok

I keep mentioning The Wizard of Oz, because it's one of the oldest classic books currently in the public domain. The series of books, published from 1900 - 1920, began dribbling into public domain over the 20th century, as US congress passed numerous Copyright Act amendments that slowed the release of the full series (and all other intellectual property) into the public domain. You can actually track the progress of The Wizard of Oz series into the public domain based on the release dates of various derivative works. Like, did your childhood have a day that was traumatized by the 1985 film, Return to Oz, "sequel" to the MGM musical classic? Well, you can thank the fact that Disney was trying to cash in on the rights before the copyright (which they had purchased) expired. And then there's Wicked - not the musical, but the novel it was based on. It came out in the 90s, after most of the Oz material was finally free to use. I like to picture Gregory Maguire writing Tik-Tok into the background of one scene, then raising a fist skyward and shouting "NO ONE CAN STOP ME!!!!"

Tik-Tok. Real fans KNOW!

As mentioned earlier, copyright laws vary worldwide, with the United States having some of the most stringent laws. Being the capitalist giant it is, this effectively means that if anyone wants to adapt anything for free and distribute it in English, it's gotta be in the US public domain. Unfortunately, the US public domain was effectively frozen for decades thanks to none other than Disney. Yes, those great abusers of the public domain themselves - master adapters of Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin, and Mulan - joined a few other media megacorps and Sonny Bono (unexpected villain twist!) in lobbying the US government to extend copyright protection for an obscene amount of time, and that's why The Wizard of Oz and it's sequels spent years as the newest, shiniest story anyone could take a shot at adapting. 

 At this point, US copyright for works published before 1978 is 95 years. The thing is, while I'm all for copyright protecting a creator's right to profit from their work, 95 years is a freakin' long time. At the turn of the century twentieth, copyright laws averaged around 25-50 years. 50 years seems like a perfectly reasonable extension to me, since it's effectively the length of one's "working life" in North America. During that time, creators should have the ability to profit off their works, control their distribution, and create whatever other derivative works they want. But beyond that, I kinda don't see the point. 

50 years later, it won't be the original creators making work based on these classic stories, but someone else. In other words, extensions like these really only benefit corporations, not people. They gatekeep works so that only certain people get to adapt stories - the ones with pockets deep enough to pay for rights. This is why any time Sony and Disney fight with each other over how to divvy up profits from Spiderman movies, I can NEVER root for Disney. Spidey would be in the public domain by now, if Disney hadn't lobbied so hard to avoid ever letting anyone but them legally use Mickey Mouse. Sure, Sony is also a soulless megacorp and probably supported the Sonny Bono (booooo!) laws too, but hey. They're not the villain-protagonist of this story.

Just think. With better laws, we could ALL make our own Spiderman.
Though some fear that would be... too many spidermen. 

Return of the Public Domain

Thankfully, mercifully, those protections are finally beginning to expire and stories are getting added again, as the prescribed time elapses. Yes, it is finally more than 95 years since the 1920s. We now have culturally relevant, modern icons like flappers, suffragists and pre-depression era venture capitalists to relate to. So current!

In all seriousness though, I am grateful. Wonderful, classic stories get added each year and one of my favourite traditions is checking the list of what's entered the public domain in January. And sure enough, as famous stories begin to drop into public domain, new adaptations are taking off as well. The big news of late has been Blood and Honey, a slasher film centered on............ Winnie the Pooh. Huh.

Look, I don't plan on seeing that film, but I am honestly THRILLED that something like this can exist now. I want it all. The weird stuff, the goofy stuff, the scary stuff, the pretentions high-brow stuff. I want us to be able to engage with and easily adapt the stories of the past. Because you never know, right? You never know what creative people are going to do when they finally get their hands on stories we love. For instance, right now Florence Welch is spearheading a Broadway musical version of The Great Gatsby and there's some serious Wicked or - dare I hope - Hadestown upside with a project like that. And now that the butt-munchers holding the copyright to the last Sherlock Holmes short story collection can no longer litigate people within an inch of their life, we might get more indie creators trying their hands at adapting the world's most famous detective.

But the real cherry on top is that after all these years, time has finally come for Disney. Next year, on January 1st 2024, Mickey Mouse, as he appears in Steamboat Willie, enters the public domain. Get ready to slap this fella on some T-shirts, people! Oh, but don't give him gloves. Or pupils. Those weren't invented yet. 

Mickey, gleefully sailing into the Public Domain.

Public pressure caught up with the Disney company in the internet age. As the story of how they and the likes of Sonny Bono (Team Cher and Cher only for life!) destroyed our legal right to use old stories started to circulate online, Disney amended their stance so that they no longer are putting forward bills to stop the slow roll-out of works entering the public domain at the end of each calendar year. Instead, they're simply arguing that they hold copyright to later versions of the character, until cartoons that feature aspects like his gloves do enter the public domain. But whatever. Screw it. We're still getting the Mouse and whole boat. 

I'm perfectly happy to watch someone make a movie about Mickey and Minnie's adventures as pirates on the Mississippi River. Or that Winnie the Pooh horror movie team can make one about him strapping victims to a torture rack made from the steamboat wheel. Or maybe we'll get a crime drama about how Mickey's father died during a fire in Pete's glove factory and now he's now on a quest to destroy all gloves. Distributed widely. All without Disney's approval. I can hardly wait. 

We spent years stuck in the past but, finally, we're not in Kansas anymore.

Making Sense of the CATS trailer: A Noble Attempt

A week ago, two things brought me great joy.

First, the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of the immensely popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, CATS, dropped on the internet.

Second, I got to listen to a grown man scream his head off as he watched this trailer.

If you, like countless others, have felt a similar sense of dread at the thought of computer enhanced cat/human hybrids taking over the world, then I am here to help. I consider myself uniquely qualified to speak on the topic. CATS was the first full-scale musical I saw on stage, back when I was nine years old. Seeing the show required a full-day trip to Vancouver for our family. In addition, the critical portion of my Master's Thesis project included discussion and analysis of CATS, as well as the children's poems it was based on, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Elliot.

So lay your head on my shoulder, child. Let me tell you the story of CATS.

Adapting an Adaptation

Film adaptations are always a little tricky, but let's start with one basic premise most people can agree on. Any time you are changing mediums, expressing the same concept through a different artform leads to change. Some are inherent to the artform itself (ex: film is more visual than the novel) but some conventions are really only that: conventions of storytelling that we've grown used to and expect now. When those conventions are broken, the art itself can feel broken, even if nothing but tradition is what tells us this ought to be so.

I won't go into the whole long list of conventions film follows, but for the purposes of this discussion, I want to focus on one very important factor: Movies cost way more to produce than books, which means they need to be consumed by/appeal to far more people if they want to make a profit. This has given rise to a particular plotting style commonly referred to as Three Act Structure. I won't go into the full scale description of it here, but loosely, it goes like this:

Act 1: Establish the protagonist, where they are from, what their problem is and what tragic flaw keeps them from solving their problem
Act 2: The protagonist attempts to solve their problem (unsuccessfully), gradually learns the problem is bigger or different than they first thought, and then experiences great failure, leading to their lowest moment.
Act 3: From that low moment, the protagonist finds the fortitude to overcome their flaw, attempts to solve the problem once more and in the climax, either solves it (victory!) or fails (tragedy!). Closing image, fade to black.

Three Act Structure is so ubiquitous, it's tempting to see it in everything and assume it's the only way to tell stories. Today, most commercially viable books also follow this structure. Heck, The Hunger Games worked so well as a movie because it already read like one in book form. But go back pre-Hollywood, and the dominating power of Three Act Structure begins to collapse. It's not the defining structure of Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales. It's not what drives Alice in Wonderland.

And if we move outside of the landscape of novels, it disappears altogether. Short stories don't always have the time to bother with all that structure foofaraw. Or look at picture books. "Everybody do the Barnyard Dance!" might be your plot. Or maybe you've picked up The Book with No Pictures, which is much more about making adults say weird stuff than it is about following character growth. But both those books are stories. They're recounting of events for the purpose of social bonding. Can't get more "story" than that.

And so returning to CATS (finally, we are returning to CATS), I think it's worth asking the question: what type of story is the film adapting? If it had only ever existed as a film, had always been a film, then it would be much, much harder to explain the weirdness going on in that trailer. But CATS not only is an adaptation, it was also never a novel, the most common source of film adaptation.

The problems become clear the moment you realize there are multiple steps in this process, and that those steps never bowed down to Three Act Structure.

Before CATS was a film, it was a play, and before that, it was a book of children's poems.

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

T.S. Eliot is considered one of the greats in poetry of the Twentieth Century, and rightly so. His work was beautiful, lyrical, thought provoking, and still gets quoted like crazy in Young Adult novels all these years later. That his work shows up in YA points to the fact that he understood something about young people, whether he was explicitly writing for them or not.

Also recommending him as a human: he liked cats. He wrote a bunch of poems about them for his godchildren. Eventually, he had enough, he was like, "hey, I think this might make a good book of poems" and so he published them, and therefor, little Andrew Lloyd Webber grew up reading them.

And despite what others might tell you, it doesn't just have a story, it has many! There's the story of Rum Tum Tugger, the cat who just wants to annoy you constantly. Or there's Mongojerrie and Rumpleteazer, the kittens who play with everything until it gets lost. One of my favorites is Skimbleshanks, who harkens to the tradition railways had of keeping cats aboard in Britain. See? So many stories! All more adorable than the last!

Importantly, those stories are also intensely relatable. As someone who owns pet cats, I can see my animals mirrored in the poems of cats more than I can in dozens of other stories that feature cats. I've lived with a Rum Tum Tugger and a Jennyanydots. Much of the success of those poems come from how well Eliot captures the lives of real domestic cats.

However, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats does not have an underlying through line other than "aren't cats great?" As a poetry book, this is just fine. Poetry is much more about evoking emotions or ideas in the reader than telling a character growth journey. Story itself is optional in poetry, so in that respect, the poems here are much more conventional "stories" than other poetry books might be. Still, if it were directly adapted into a visual medium today, the most logical would probably be YouTube meme compilation videos. I'd like to think in some alternate universe, there's a poem by an internet era Eliot that goes a little like...

Miss Melarosey rides round on a Roomba
Cleaning the house while the other cats slumber

You get the idea.

When Webber began adapting the poems, he wasn't initially trying to make a whole musical out of them. Instead, he used them as a personal challenge, to compose something where the lyrics were set and couldn't be bent to fit the needs of the music. The project eventually piqued the interest of Eliot's widow, and she passed on to him some poems that Eliot cut from the collection, including Grizabella the Glamour Cat, which Eliot had worried would be too sad for children. But that sad poem was the final spark Webber needed. To him, the bleakness of that poem helped contrast with the jovial, goofiness of the other cat characters, and he felt he now had the makings of a full musical on his hands.

But a musical about what???

Guys, I can't believe you're still asking. It's about cats.

CATS as Broadway Royalty

In CATS earliest days, there were a lot of people working on the show who were deeply confused by Webber's vision for the production. They tried to turn it into something more recognizable. Something that would work with conventional story telling structures.

"Maybe it's a satire of British politicians?"

No hun, it's about cats.

"What if we make this a chamber piece, with minimal effects and a small ensemble?"

Cats deserve better than that, Karen! We will have strobe lights and a cast of dozens because cats are worth it!

"Okay, so who is our hero? What cat are we following? What are they trying to accomplish?"

HAVE YOU EVEN MET A CAT??? NO CAT IS TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING!!!

Eventually, Webber got his wish, though not without sacrifice. The production scared so many investors away, he literally bet his house and all his money on it, just to finance it. I'm sure his family and loved ones shook in fear for him. But Webber was the one left laughing because the public ate CATS up. It became the longest running and most profitable show of all-time, only to be surpassed in that title by Andrew Lloyd Webber's later work, Phantom of the Opera.

And in my opinion, Webber was right to put his foot down every time someone tried to make CATS about something other than cats. The whole reason the show works is because it's driven by poetry, music and movement. Those things leant themselves more to the subject matter than a plot did, because real cats almost never experience character development. They are what they are, and they either annoy or entertain us. Since Eliot's poems were originally about recognizable, normal cat behaviors, this was the truest way of bringing these poems onto the stage.

In addition to Eliot's poems and some of Webber's best music, CATS also has some of the best dancing on Broadway. A lot of time was spent developing how the performers would move and emote in the show, and how the more cat-like motions they performed would be mixed with ballet and modern dance choreography.

It's actually because the show has so little plot that it can revel in the things that make it strong. It's about nothing more than a gathering of cats, who have come to strut and show-off to each other. They can spontaneously break out into dance sequences without it feeling jarring. They can switch tone and focus character song to song, because, like real cats, they don't have the attention span to have a protagonist.

What little through-line there is for the play was eventually developed based on theme, rather than a plot. Trevor Nunn, the poor soul who got tasked with directing and helping develop CATS into a full show with Webber, tried his best to piece together themes of death, rebirth and the folk tale that all cats have nine lives. It wasn't a plot, but he hoped that viewers sensed a kind of progression through ideas, that would keep them engaged.

And there is another reason it worked, and that is because CATS was intended for the theatre, not film.

Writing for Film and Theatre

At first glance, theatre and film seem like very similar mediums. Some people never go to the theatre, because it's expensive, and they don't understand what it could offer them that a film can't. Aside from the thrill of a live performance, is there any real reason to see Hamlet on stage as opposed to in a film adaptation?

As something written before the advent of film, Hamlet might seem like an odd candidate for suiting film, but in many ways, it's early inception is one of the reasons it is so adaptable. In Shakespeare's time, theatre was the primary way of sharing stories with the mass market. Not everyone could read, but everyone could see plays, which were cheap. As a result, Shakespeare's plays often fall into that comforting, digestible Three Act format mentioned earlier, Hamlet included.

For hundreds of years, theatre was the primary venue for social gathering and experiencing stories. But when film came along, the balance of power shifted. Films were potentially more expensive to make but they were so much cheaper to distribute worldwide. You no longer had to go see Hamlet put on by the yokels at the local theatre. You could see Laurence Olivier in the role, without ever leaving your hometown.

In order for theatre to survive commercially, it had to identify who its real audience was and what they wanted. Two particular groups of people are still interested in theatre.

1) People who value the visceral, live aspect. The joy of seeing something staged and knowing that all the pieces have to exist and move together in real, human space is exhilarating. Dance, as a result, thrives in theatre, because it can be very hard to capture the full three-dimensional nature of movement in film, especially for large crowd numbers. Film flattens the image and even 3D technology struggles to recapture the depth of movement theatre can provide. Dance looks better on stage. I've never seen any film that successfully convinced me otherwise. By a similar token, music does often sound better, or at least more emotive, live. Again, there's that visceral component of the experience that you can't get from film. Little surprise, in the wake of the rise of film, musical theatre thrived and took over Broadway.
2) People who like experimental, weird stuff that doesn't suit commercial Hollywood film making. I'm by no means suggesting that film can't be experimental or that theatre wasn't before film put pressure on it. But that pressure still matters. Most cinemas make their money off of digestible blockbusters. Theatre isn't going to grab that crowd anymore though, so it might as well cater to people who want to see a naked boy on stage with a horse. There's a reason it's the theatre club that has the reputation for housing weirdos, not the film club.

And CATS ticks the box for both groups. For a big, flashy spectacle musical, it's surprisingly experimental with it's unconventional story structure, reliance on theme to drive forward progression and lack of protagonist. It's more committed to exploring what it's like to be a cat than it is to examining the human condition. Lest we forget, CATS started off as an experiment. Webber wanted to see what would happen if he wrote music for pre-established poetry.

In recent years, Andrew Lloyd Webber has become a figure that the musical theatre community likes to make fun of. He was such a phenomenon in the 70s and 80s with CATS cat-apulting him from respected, working composer to mega-star. That fame only grew with the release of Phantom, and soon it felt like he was everywhere. Unfortunately, that meant that when his less successful work of the late 80s and 90s came around, he was a highly public figure whose flubs were likewise highly public. It was very easy to slide into mocking him as the weird cat guy. Or the guy who made a play about dropping a chandelier onstage.

But I do think we can be a bit unfair, because often, Webber's strength was being that weird cat guy. Theatre needs weirdness if it's going to survive and thrive. He understood and recaptured the spectacle of theatre better than he told stories or understood the human condition. He needed a good lyricist, like Tim Rice, if he was going to say anything profound or develop characters convincingly. Better to leave the heartfelt, emotional musicals to the likes of Sondheim and let Webber make silly things about dancing cats and chandeliers.

But with the crazy costumes, expressive dancing and energetically scored poetry, CATS did capture something real. As a nine-year-old, seeing that play was a highlight of my brief existence. I've often wondered if one of the reasons we're so hard on CATS as a play is also because of it's intended audience. As a play based on children's poems, it still is intended for children. I've spoken with so many people who struggle with the idea that something can be beautiful or artistic or profound and still be understood by a child. It's been my experience that some of the most beautiful things are those that resonate with children. Children are deeply sensitive to beauty, because they haven't learned to be cynical about it yet.

Cynical, like some of us might be about a certain movie trailer.

And so, that Trailer...

Look what you made her do

Like a lot of you, my initial reaction to the trailer was one of... horrified curiosity, let's say. It does look weird. Film, in it's over fascination with computer graphics, has turned the painted faces and lycra bodysuits of the original CATS world into photorealistic fur. What was expressive in the theatre is now rendered uncanny on film. Some people have suggested it would have been better animated in a more stylized way, like a traditional hand drawn musical. But I do empathize with the film makers, because that would have lost the dancing, and dance is one of the primary reasons to go see CATS.

If I'm being honest, what actually concerned me is the dialogue. CATS the musical gave up on having a plot, but the film seems to be trying to pull one out of the emotive, theme driven material that Trevor Nunn cobbled together. The proportion of singing to spoken lines in the trailer is way off of what it was in the musical and that... concerns me. Concerns me that someone involved in the film's production got confused and figured CATS was actually about Grizabella's quest to ascend to the heaviside layer.

For the last time, guys. It's about cats.

But this is a multi-million dollar film that needs multi-million dollar ticket sales and so, following the logic of Hollywood formula, some poor screenwriter seems to have been tasked with shoving Three Act Structure down CATS throat at last, like a pill from the veterinarian that your pet is just going to regurgitate in a few minutes anyway.

Maybe the transition will work better than I think. Maybe some of the experimental nature will still shine through in the film, or they'll at least capture some of the joyous spectacle and dancing that made the musical worth seeing. Or maybe it will be a ghastly, expensive train wreck, fueled only by a cash grab at our nostalgia for the musical.

Either way, I kinda want to see it. With it's giant franchises and carefully plotted Blockbusters, Hollywood takes so few risks any more. Whether it succeeds or fails, CATS was a risk. And at least there's singing. At least there's dancing. At least most of the leads are actual singers and dancers.

And I, for one, am curious how they picked a protagonist. Just which cat did the dart hit when they threw it at the board? And what character journey are they going to take us on between Taylor Swift shaking catnip over a crowd from a bejeweled canister?

I have only questions. No answers. And with that, I need to go feed my cat.

Speak Easy Speak Love

It's 1927 and down at the Hey Nonny Nonny speakeasy, the jazz is playing and the booze is flowing. Hidden inside a dilapidated manor house on Long Island, seventeen-year-old Hero struggles to keep the place afloat after the death of her mother. With gangs and bootleggers trying to pressure her out of the market, it's going to take her whole crew to keep the speakeasy open.

Luckily, she's got the help of her long-time ally Prince on her side, and sometimes even Prince's mobster connected half-brother, John. The jazz music comes courtesy of rising starlet Maggie, who's loyal to Hey Nonny Nonny to a fault. Plus there's the loving patronage of rich trust fund kid Benedick, who would give anything to run away from his current life of comfort to become a writer. And starting today, there's also Beatrice, Hero's ambitious, would-be doctor cousin, who sees no point in holding her opinions back from anyone. Least of all some upstart, rich boy, writer, like Benedick.

As the summer heats up, so does the battle of wits between Benedick and Beatrice. And soon, it seems everyone at the Hey Nonny Nonny is at terrible risk of falling in love with each other.

What Makes It So Good

As a teenager, my favorite play by Shakespeare was Much Ado About Nothing. I loved the dynamic between Benedick and Beatrice and I still think some of the funniest scenes in theater ever are the ones where the Prince decides it's time to trick the pair into falling for each other. Also, I loved Denzel Washington. And Keanu Reeves. And Michael Keaton. And of course I loved Emma Thompson. And I loved Kenneth Brannagh almost as much as he loves himself.

In my second year of university, I took a course on Shakespeare's comedies, and this was where I realized that my love of the play was, at least in part, largely based on one fantastic adaptation. Read as plain text, it is staggering how much time is wasted on pretending Hero is dead, in order to give the second half a plot line. The parts I loved best about the show are largely over by the halfway point, and then the pace of the play grinds to a halt.

I came out of that class surprised to realize that, while Kenneth Brannagh may have created my favorite Shakespeare adaptation with his movie, there were stronger scripts in the Bard's canon. I've never seen a bad production of Twelfth Night, because the material is just too good.

So when I found out McKelle George was coming out with a book that was a 1920's update of the story, I was intrigued, because a) I love the Jazz Age and b) even with it's slogging second half, there's still a lot to love about Much Ado About Nothing. It still has some of Shakespeare's best characters. I still ship Benedick and Beatrice like no other couple.

I first heard of Speak Easy Speak Love in a class McKelle George taught at the Storymakers conference in 2017. She and a friend were presenting on the topic of writing books that were based on classic literature, and what went into the process of adaptation. They emphasized the importance of balancing between loyalty to the source material and finding places to make it your own. And the best places to make something your own tend to be where the flaws are in the original.

Of course it's important to still love the source material, and believe me, I came to this book with high expectations because I love the original so much. But it was so nice to not see Hero spend half the story pretending to be dead. It was great that Benedick never has to challenge Claudio and the Prince to a duel (because Hero is pretending to be dead) that never happens (because Hero actually isn't dead) and overall, just wastes everyone's time. Who even likes those scenes? Not me, dear reader.

Aside from some smart updates in terms of plot, the book also excels as a loving adaptation of the Bard's work. Within the theater, it's traditional that directors give their own spin on the setting, since the stage plays Shakespeare wrote are so sparse in terms of set direction. My favorite version of Twelfth Night I ever saw took place in a 1960's beach shack.

Similarly, the setting is so lovingly rendered here. The book is filled with fabulous historical touches, that make the place feel very real, and the Author's Note at the end does a fantastic job outlining where liberties were taken, and what the real-life equivalents of these events were.

The characters are all fantastic as well, though a couple chapters in, I had to come to term with the fact that Emma Thompson was decidedly not playing Beatrice. It almost feels like someone else has been cast in the part. Someone who plays up how smart Beatrice is, rather than how charming. Once I got over that, I loved her. Benedick is utter perfection in his big-headed, big-hearted way and the rest of the cast is just barrels of fun. Overall, I highly recommend it.

What Could Make it Better

Like the play it is based on, the book's plot starts and stutters at times. McKelle George actually does a lot of work to infuse plot into a meandering play, but I think there are some inherent problems that emerge when you base a book on story that feels more like a series of awesome scenes than a fully cohesive narrative.

There's an argument to be made that I'm being unfair to the source material. Story plotting worked differently 500 years ago, and I certainly don't mean to discredit the inherent genius of Shakespeare by poking fun at it here. And it's worth repeating that I do still REALLY love this play. It isn't meant to be overly plot focused, which is why we accept the way the narrative skips around between dramatic and comedic, between the main cast and the Dogberry subplot. There's just so many great characters, with interesting things to do. Who wants to be hogtied to plot when all this other fun stuff is going on?

I bring all this up, because this book is also prone to subplots and taking its sweet time to enjoy a scene. I've seen some reviewers mark the book down for this fact, but to me, it was part of the charm. If the plot had been over-the-top punchy, I'm not convinced it would have felt like Much Ado About Nothing. It would have been decidedly Much Ado About Something.

Regardless, it's still worth mentioning, because it takes a while for the central conflict to land. Whereas the original spends way too long in a dreary conclusion, this book is a little slow to finish setting things up. The masquerade that shapes the opening of the play happens close to the middle of the book. So that should give you an idea of where the balance has swung. Overall, this strikes me as a forgivable decision, because again, the first half of the play is the best part. Might as well spend most of the reader's time there.

So if you're at all a fan of the Bard and especially if you also have a soft spot for historical fiction, pick this one up. You'll be singing Hey Nonny Nonny along with the rest of us.

Ranking The Harry Potter Books from Worst To Best

Ah, Harry Potter!

Whenever I'm fumbling around for topics to write on, there is no source more reliable than that great, cultural juggernaut, the mighty wizard himself, Mr. Potter! (our new celebrity)

I have enough opinions about the Harry Potter series I could probably write seven books of my own simply analyzing them and the profound impact they had on children's literature, the cultural conscience, and my own life. I come from the generation raised on Potter - the one that went to book launches in costumes and scoured message boards for theories about what would happen in the next sequel.

Overall, the series is a benchmark for children's literature and I have no doubt it will go on to be part of the "canon," both for Middle Grade fiction and Young Adult. If I had to pick one thing Rowling did consistently well in every book, it would be her worldbuilding. It amazed me how good she was at introducing something new in EVERY BOOK that still felt natural to the rest of the world that came before. She was a master of never over-playing her hand, holding onto good plot twists for years. As a result, each book really feels necessary to the overall series. If you skip out on one, you skip out on an essential part of the mythos she created.

Even so, some of the books are distinctly better than the others. Some are better paced, some have deeper theme resonance, some have better side characters.

Picking a favorite Potter book isn't an easy task. It's not as though any one book is a trash fire, and whether or not you share the same opinions as me will depend on certain factors - like if you're super into Voldemort as a villain or if you really loved reading about Quidditch matches. As a result, I can't help but rank these by how I appreciate the novels, and as you read my brief review of each, you'll start to pick up on exactly what did and did not work for me in the series.

Each book will be ranked on the following list of factors, which I recommend all people use for evaluating Harry Potter books:

Title Element:

Harry Potter titles serve as a tip off towards the MYSTERY! of the book. They rarely made sense pre-release, teasing some element we hadn't been introduced to yet. In this way, they serve as a decent way of evaluating the worldbuilding of each novel.

Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher:

Voldemort cursed the position and so there was always a new one each year! And not everyone can be Lupin. This ranking indicates how strong the side characters were, often a top feature of Potter books.

Ron Weasley:

Ron was my favorite character. Most of the time. He fluctuates between selfish, oafish phases and the wise-cracking loveable side-kick that we - well, loved. My biggest beef with the movies was that they only got that first side. He played the buffoon 99% of the time, never giving us what made him engaging in the books. I get why some people found him annoying. So did I, on occasion. How strong the "Ron factor" was often speaks to how well the dynamic between the main three characters was working. Seriously, when Ron is at his best, so are Harry and Hermione.

Pacing and Theme and Actual Relevant Stuff and, let's face it, where 90% of the ranking is - Yeah, this is the only category that matters. But I you need to hear my Ron related thoughts too.

So, without further ado...

#7 - HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS

Fact: This list would be in a totally different order if it was
ranking the movies because Emily LOVES wizard battles!

Title: 4
This title let us know the series was going to wrap up on a wild note. And the Deathly Hallows ended up being totally rock and roll.

Teacher: 7

Some random death eater we hardly see, since the books don't take place at the school. In general, there is a dearth of relatable side characters.

Ron: 6

Ron emerges from the cocoon of his obnoxious phase back in Book 6! He's a little annoying at times here, but it's building towards redemption, so over all, pretty good.

Actual Ranking: 7

Ugh. This book. I love it. I love every Potter book. But I've always been aware that I distinctly love it less than all the others. It ditches the traditional school setting, to it's detriment. It's missing most of the lovable side characters, only to wantonly kill a lot of them in the last act. It ends with that horrific epilogue.

That being said, it has some real strengths. The Deathly Hallows was a fun level of mystery to sew into the series at a point when the world felt known. Ron's betrayal and eventual reuniting with Harry have a lot of emotional resonance and kind of encapsulate how the whole series has evolved between the three leads. Dumbledore's philosophy about death - a philosophy that's been building up since the first book, finally comes full circle. Molly Weasley blasts some serious witch-hiney and Harry finally takes out old Voldy. And Snape. Oh my gosh, Snape. The "feels" with him are complicated. Whether or not you see him as a hero or still inherently abusive, I like him for the fact that he's always at least interesting.

Overall, Book 7 is a beautiful send off to a great series. So why is it so low?

Partially because a lot of the book is unpleasant. Getting through the camping in the woods section is a slog. Books 4-7 are all too long. Period. They ramble in a LOT of places, but whereas that was mostly bearable in the previous books, here it's unpleasant and boring. There aren't any jokes to break that meandering pacing up. Everyone is too depressed. I get that the book isn't supposed to be happy, but if your children's book is dark, it can't waste time being boring. (did we need to see Lupin have a midlife crisis? Or the Godric's Hollow sequence where they literally learn nothing helpful for their quest?) Honestly, the darkest parts of the book are often the best. It's great when they're in mortal peril. It means SOMETHING IS HAPPENING!!!

The book also does a weird thing that none of the other books do with regards to the central mystery. In the other books, the reader learns what Harry learns with Harry, but in Book 7, for the sake of dramatic tension, Rowling holds information back that Harry knows so that reader doesn't - namely that he controls the Elder Wand. I get why she did this, and I'm not sure I have any kind of work around for it, but it did feel a bit disingenuous. Much of the appeal of these books hinges on the reader discovering the wizarding world WITH Harry, but the very conclusion relies on Harry hiding information from the reader. And I don't like that.

#6 - HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

Felix Felicis, providing much needed humor.

Title: 7
Despite being primarily about the history of Voldemort and Horcruxes, the title is essentially Harry Potter and the Snape Snape Snape. It's more Books 5 and 7 that strike me as the Snape books - the ones that show his relationships with James and Lily. Overall, bit of a disconnect.

Teacher: 5
We don't get a new teacher here, since Snape is a known entity, but he's compelling, and we DO get Slughorn over at Potions. Still pretty darn good, but there are stronger entries.

Ron: 7

This is the book that all Ron haters go to in order to justify their poor thinking. The trio is at it's angstiest here, with no one really getting along, but no one having a proper, outright argument either. It's just obnoxious. His relationship with Lavender is weird, and I think squandered time that could have been better spent delving into his relationship with Harry and Hermione, especially since he abandons them briefly in Book 7. More on this unfulfilled potential later.

Actual Ranking: 6

In this book, the villain's development matters more than what any of the heroes are doing. We spend a lot of time in the pensieve - most of our more interesting scenes, in fact. Voldemort is a good villain, but I've never been a huge apologist for him. He's evil because love potion. Kinda sad. Kinda lackluster as an explanation. I'm not sure what origin story would have satisfied me, but the interesting evil in the books - the kind that is textured and complex - comes from other villains, like Umbridge and the Malfoys. And Snape. But again, this is a false Snape book. A book that sets you up for Snapeness and fails to deliver.

He is, of course, the title element, but that reveal feels anticlimactic. Also, there's some weird gender politicking over his old textbook where Harry's like "I sense the DUDENESS of the Snape who wrote notes in this" and Hermione is like "OMGosh, please shut up" and what the crap did this subplot add?

The poor pacing is on grand display here, with Harry at odd times stalking Draco, or observing Ron's terrible love-life, in between jumping in the pensieve with Dumbledore. The Ron/Lavender relationship is a low-point for the series, which the book seems to know, yet it plows ahead into it. Harry also gets his own terrible romance, complete with chest monster, and the series Moste Boring Character, Ginny Weasley.

Ginny, who is so pretty even the Slytherin's notice. Ginny, who can play every Quidditch position, then call out that annoying, shrill Hermione. Ginny, who is perfectly understanding when Harry breaks-up with her to go on an epic quest to stop Voldemort. In a series filled with fully realized characters,  with flaws and strengths, Ginny is shockingly flat. All her flaws are conveniently locked away in Tom Riddle's diary, back in Book 2. It stuns me, because there is so much potential for an actual character arc here. Ginny should have so many trust issues from getting possessed by the boy in her diary who claimed to care about her. Or she should be driven to her Goddess-like levels of perfection BECAUSE she screwed up so badly in her first year. But instead of exploring the obvious depth Rowling set up, instead she is nothing but pitch-perfect girlfriend material for Harry. She never challenges him or asks anything of him. She's just super understanding and really cool. A fantasy girlfriend. Their relationship is completely unbalanced, unrealistic and uninteresting. I could say more, but this isn't meant to be a total Ginny hate fest. She doesn't deserve that much abuse. She's boring, not morally objectionable. But man, do I hate boring.

By now, you're probably wondering why this is ranked above Book 7 and I will admit, it came close. If not for the Epilogue where Harry is shown married to freakin' Ginny and all his children inherited her obnoxious genes, things could have been different. But there are some good moments in Book 6. Since they're at school, there are still funny scenes and quirky side-characters breaking the flow up. Harry goes to the Slug Club party with Luna! Yay! Slughorn is fabulous and repping for all the non-evil Slytherins! The felix felicis scene is divine. Moral of the story: Slughorn is great.

Also, I think over the years, we've forgotten how powerful the death of Dumbledore was. I remember after the book came out, we were reeling. There were news articles about people hanging banners off of overpasses that read DUMBLEDORE IS DEAD because no one knew how to process the revelation. This was a moment so huge, it made everyone debate for YEARS whether or not Snape was evil, something that, in hindsight, seems kinda obvious. But it didn't back then.

And even if I got bored of Harry chasing Draco, watching young Malfoy's desperate attempt to redeem his family paid dividends. Heck, it set up the best elements of the most recent Harry Potter book, Cursed Child (otherwise known as Sir-Not-Appearing on this List. For spoiler reasons. And because, c'mon. Even the weakest of the original series is miles better.)

The book had lots of good parts, even if it ran around in circles chasing it's own tail at times. And I can't overstate how much the jokes were needed to keep the lumbering pacing from falling apart. So it gets a spot above the bottom. Hurray for it.

#5 - HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

That time we learned evil is a fan of anagrams

Title: 6
I'm a firm believer that if you have to call it a "secret," you're veering into telling rather than showing. The sequence in the Chamber itself is pretty good, but I never was crazy about the title itself. This ranking is probably the most impacted by the way the title made me "feel" rather than how strong of a role the title element played in the story, but much of the middle of this list comes out close to each other, so it's hard to rank any other way.

Teacher: 3
I have mixed feelings on the movies, but I will forever be grateful for the greatest casting match-up of all time, when Kenneth Brannagh played himse- I mean, Gilderoy Lockhart. I love him so much, and he might just be my favorite thing about this book.

Ron: 4

Ron is a solid best friend here and adorable confronting his fear of spiders. Yay, Ron!

Actual Ranking: 5

Of the early books, this is my least favorite. It doesn't do much terribly wrong, BUT... I don't like Colin Creevy. And I don't like Dobby. I'm sorry, I just don't. At the end of Book 4, during the three-year hiatus between book releases, I did a lot of theorizing. I was particularly concerned with which characters might die and I started making a list of people I could handle dying without caring much. Top of that list were Colin and Dobby and then they DID both die and I felt like a terrible person, not least of all because even after he died, I STILL DIDN'T CARE ABOUT COLIN CREEVY!!! Dobby sorta won me over in later books. Sorta.

If these characters didn't annoy me, I might have rated the book more highly. It does introduce us to the Burrow, Lucius Malfoy and the House Founders. Some of my favorite aspects of the series have roots in Book 2. I really respect it for everything it sets up in later books, but I think too much of the plot revolved around the set-up of "Harry is annoyed by his adoring fans." Because, you see, I also found many of those adoring fans annoying.

Still, the final battle in the Chamber is amazing, Gilderoy Lockhart is a fantastic flim-flam man and the basilisk in the pipes is super creepy. This book also gives us the best iteration of Ginny, since it's the one where she's sweet and human and fallible. She's a great character to be used by Riddle too, since she's so innocent and inherently valuable to Ron and I value what Ron values.

I know plenty of people love this one, and I've had it pointed out before that this book might be the most plot-heavy. There isn't an inch of fat in this book, with pretty much every scene proving important to the central mystery. It's also the shortest book. While I accuse the later books of being too long, this one might be too short for my taste. There aren't enough character moments. The ones we do get are pretty great, especially those involving the polyjuice potion and Lockhart. But many of the other character moments involve Dobby and Colin. For me, much of my love of the Harry Potter series comes from the character moments, so without these firing on full, it adds up to a lesser whole. Of all the books, this is the one I'm the most indifferent about. It doesn't inspire the sense of frustration that Book 7 does or the wallowing of "what could have been" that I feel for Book 6. It's a good book, just one I found less engaging than the others.

#4 - HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE

Warner Brothers went to great lengths to ensure that Harry and Ron
sported hair as truly awful as high school feels at 14.

Title: 5
I remember being kind of underwhelmed by this title, especially when we found out what the Goblet was right away. I was like, "whatever, it's just a trophy" and then the end came and "OH MY HECK IT'S A PORTKEY TO VOLDEMORT!!! DANGER!!! DANGER!!!" Man, Harry Potter has the best titles.

Teacher: 6
Mad-Eye Moody/Barty Crouch Jr. is one of Rowling's great villains hiding in plain sight. I flip-flopped on where to place him compared to Quirrell, because as a character, he is more enjoyable, but Quirrell was a more shocking reveal. By the time Moody is revealed as the villain, I think you're kind of on to him, but it's a nice twist that it's not even the real Moody. The scene where he preaches CONSTANT VIGILANCE is one of the low-key funniest scenes in the entire series, though it's tempered by the heartbreaking realization at the end that he's taunting Neville, possibly on purpose. Still, it's my favorite piece of Potter to read out loud.

Ron: 3

I may be alone in thinking this, but this is annoying Ron done RIGHT. The Yule Ball sequence is a showcase of Ron's potential for pettiness, meanness and insecurity, but it's done in a way that I think adds to his humanity and shows how awkward and wrong-headed young love can be. His fight with Harry is also well done, and helps confront the inherent imbalances in their relationship. And despite being a bit of a boob for the whole book, Ron is still funny. Some of his best lines are in this book, from jokes dancing naked in Dobby's tea-cozy, to his claim he got a Yule Ball date out of "sheer animal magnetism." He's rough-edged and hilarious here. Lots to love.

Actual Ranking: 4

The middle book! Right in the middle! This was definitely not intentional, but it feels right, doesn't it? This book, to me, is where the problems of the later books began. The pacing fell off the rails, for the sake of stuffing the book to the gills with character moments. For those who don't love the moody teens era of Potter, this is also where the moodiness takes a decidedly "teen-aged" turn.

But it's also one of the funniest books in the series, between the Yule Ball, "Mad-Eye Moody" turning Draco into a ferret, Hagrid falling in love, Dudley going on a diet and Harry bathing with Moaning Myrtle. It's a trip.

I've called out the later books as too long, and I stand by that, though I want to temper that statement here. I believe that we, the fans, are partially to blame for the ballooning length of the Harry Potter books, because all we wanted was more. More funny scenes! More character moments! Rowling was so good at writing side-characters, and once she reached Book 4, she leaned into that, giving us a plethora of extraneous character scenes. Most of Book 4's funny sequences wouldn't exist if it had been as tightly written as the first three. So while we get detours from here on out, they do at least expand the world and let us relish the characters a little longer. There are worse things to destroy pacing for. Man, I remember being disappointed when I learned Book 6 WASN'T going to be longer than Book 5!

Also, this book gets a few things completely right. Voldemort's rise is given lots of room to torment us with the horror of what is happening. Rowling clearly knew this book needed to act as a transition between the Middle Grade aspects of the early books and the mature themes of the more Young Adult inclined later series. She pulls that transition off with the rise of Voldemort brilliantly, setting up the action of the rest of the series in the process.

#3 - HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHEONIX

What's gonna work? TEAMWORK!

Title: 3
Leading up to the book's release, I was excited, because it just sounded so rad. And even though the mystery of WHAT the Order is gets resolved quickly, I still love the way it plays out over the book. This book really expanded the adult wizarding world, letting us in on how the first war was fought and how the Ministry of Magic worked. The book ends with the first wizard war of the series, and it's such a worthwhile build to the shoot-out in the Ministry between Death Eaters and Order members.

Teacher: 2
Yes. The second best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is Umbridge. You hate her. You wanted her dead more than Voldemort. And it's for those reasons she's so fabulous. The main villains of the Harry Potter series - Voldemort, the Dursleys, Draco and Snape - are all introduced in Book 1. They represent separate areas Harry has to confront growing up. His past (the Dursleys), his peers (Draco), his assumptions (Snape) and evil itself (Voldemort). Most of the supporting villains are appendages to these .

But another villain is added when Harry reaches the time that most teenagers find themselves confronting "society" for the first time, and it is personified in Delores Umbridge. She represents the sheer unfairness of the world, and does so perfectly. Her lack of comeuppance is infuriating, and yet also the right fate for a villain of her ilk. Because "society" never goes away. You just have to live with it, even though some days, you hate it more than evil itself.

Ron: 5

Ron is so lovely in this book. He and Hermione realize that Harry is going through a rough time and so they step-up to support him. Ron feels like he's grown up considerably since Book 4, actually complimenting Hermione and thanking her for the things she does for them, something that tends to unnerve her. It's adorable.

One of my biggest problems with Book 6 is it undoes a lot of what feels like genuine character development that Ron underwent in Book 5, for the sake of laughs at his stupid relationship with Lavender Brown. Personally, I think Book 6 would have been stronger if the plot had involved Hermione and Ron ACTUALLY DATING and breaking-up, and letting that fuel Ron's despair in Book 7. And I hate to say it, but I think the reason it didn't happen is that I don't get the impression Rowling is great at writing romance (see commentary on Ginny). But can you imagine how great the Book 7 ending would have been if that big kiss came out of them deciding it was worth being together, despite the hurt of a previous relationship? Ugh! In a better world, that is the arc we would have had.

So yes. This lovely version of Book 5 Ron is getting marked down, because I have a fanfic version of where Book 6 SHOULD have gone in my head, that the actual Book 6 ruined for me. Sue me.

Actual Ranking: 3

Of all the Harry Potter books, this is the one that has moved upwards in my rankings the most over time. When I first read it, right after it came out, I was not prepared for Wizard Angst. Up until Book 5, Harry seemed infallible to me, and I didn't like realizing that he wasn't.

But the more I thought about it, especially as later books came out, the more I respected this book and came to like it, then love it. Harry finally processes the anger and resentment he feels for all the loss he's suffered in life. I wanted him to be too noble to let this stuff get to him, but looking back, I'm glad he wasn't. His hurt and anger made him more real.

But this book also shows the roots of the Harry who will one day stop Voldemort. In the previous books, he's primarily reacting to circumstances that come to him. Here, he's trying to figure out how to act for himself, but he doesn't have the tools to do that yet. So he mouths off to Umbridge. He tries dating Cho Chang. He begins leading Dumbledore's Army. He defies the training in Legilimens Snape gives him, believing his connection to Voldemort to be valuable.

And that last action ends up spelling the death of his beloved Godfather, Sirius. It's a heartbreaking consequence to his unwillingness to cut himself off from Voldemort, but if Harry had followed his training, he might not have been tempted out of the school and into harm's way. Then again, maybe that confrontation would have come in another place. The war was on it's way, and there's something beautifully tragic about that inevitability.

Book 5 is the book where Harry grows up. One part I love is the long denouement after the battle at the Ministry of Magic, where Harry struggles to come to terms with with the loss of Sirius. He's in enough denial that he even asks Nearly-Headless Nick if his Godfather might come back as a ghost, but gradually, he learns to accept that this won't happen.

Rowling has gone on the record several times saying that the series is largely about death - accepting it, processing it. It's there in the first book, when Dumbledore calls it the next adventure to the well-organized mind. And of course, it's there all the way until Harry's mind is well enough organized, that he's willing to take on that adventure in order to stop Voldemort in Book 7. Book 5 is where Harry first confronts death personified, in the form of the thestrals, and then gradually begins to accept it, as he learns to move on after Sirius.

Overall, I think Book 5 has some of the most profound emotional resonance. It's tough to read at times for that reason, but over all, I think that speaks to why it's so good.

#2 - HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE

The precious babies!

Title: 1
The one that started it all. Note that this ranking is based on the original title, and not the abomination that they made of it in the US versions. When I read this book as a smug little twelve-year-old, I relished the fact that I knew what a philosopher's stone was, even though Harry didn't. But then it turns out to be the key to everything in a wonderful, twisty, mysterious plot for immortality, where self-sacrifice is the key to obtaining it.

Teacher: 4
Quirrell isn't the most interesting character, right up until it turns out he's been trying to kill Harry the whole book, then he's kinda fabulous. Plus, he's got an undead, zombie Voldemort on the back of his head. It's creepy and weird and marvelous. A great kick-off to the books.

Ron: 2

In which we meet Ron, and he is wonderful. He is the best friend we all wanted. He insults, then saves Hermione, and it is love. He sacrifices himself on a chessboard. Blessed, lovely Ron.

Actual Ranking: 2

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

I will never get over what a great opening line that is. Or what a great opening book to an amazing series this book is. I have a slight bias towards the first books in series that I've talked about elsewhere on this blog. It's my opinion that first books have an advantage over all others, in that they get to introduce the world. Everything is new and exciting, and isn't that just the truth with Harry Potter? Everything we would go on to love about the books starts here. Magic, Quidditch, the Hogwarts express, classes, the trio, owl post, the Forbidden Forest, Diagon Alley, Hogwarts castle. The list goes on and on and on and on and on.

Aside from the setting being new, so are the characters. The Harry Potter books are filled with people worth loving, and one of my favorite parts of the book is watching the central relationships form. There are few groups of friends I've rooted for more in literature than Harry, Ron and Hermione. Each one feels so essential to the balance of the group. This is proven when they enter the trapdoor together, and each one has a unique sacrifice to make for the good of their quest.

The central mystery introduces us to all the fun of a Potter book, and here, the characters are trying to solve it for the same reason we are - not because the world depends on them solving it, but because solving puzzles is fun. Why is there a troll in the dungeons? Why is there a three-headed dog in the third floor corridor? Why does Snape hate Harry? What is the Philosopher's Stone?

At first, they're driven by sheer curiosity, until they realize that an actual plot is in motion, then things get serious. It mirrors the reader experience that would eventually happen across the entire series. What starts off as light-hearted fun, eventually comes to mean much more as Rowling unfurls her stories of loss and triumph.

Altogether, a brilliant start to a brilliant series.

#1 - HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

I still feel annoyed that they ditched the wizard robes for most of
Movie 3, but this scene still rocks.

Title: 2
Otherwise known as Harry Potter and the Hottie McHotterson.

Teacher: 1
After two terrible teachers, the students were due for someone who excelled in his position. Enter Remus Lupin, the teacher everyone dreamed they could have. And like so many good things, he's ripped away too soon. When I finished reading this book, I was shook, because I no longer knew if I planned on marrying Ron or Lupin. WHO WOULD IT BE?????

Ron: 1

Is it weird that I love the Ron and Hermione that fight with each other so much? This book is Hermione's rough year - the one where she takes too much on and suffers for it, disappointing both herself and her friends. And Ron really doesn't let her off the hook, harder on her than almost anyone else. Right up until he realizes that they've also let her down, and she deserves his help too. I've always loved how natural the relationships between the main trio feel, and the fighting between Ron and Hermione here isn't caused shallowly. Ron had good reason to think Hermione's cat ate his rat and in his place, I'd have wanted to kill her for denying it.

And yet Harry's role in the trio here is also fascinating. Back when people used to argue over who would end up with Hermione - Harry or Ron - this book to me served as strong evidence for why Harry and Hermione just wouldn't work, because when she and Ron are fighting, it's consistently Ron's side he takes. Ron is the emotional glue of the trio. He dictates when they're "fighting" and when they aren't. The books where Harry struggles with outright loneliness aren't the ones where Hermione is gone, but Ron. Here, he's given a chance to choose between them and picks Ron. This sucks for Hermione, but I think there's some realism in the relationships here, and what it often feels like being a girl whose best friends are boys. Like, man, have I lived this myself.

This book hits me in a very personal place because of how much I relate to Hermione's falling apart from Ron, and their eventual reconcile. The moment where he promises to help with Buckbeak's trial and she starts sobbing in his arms is so cathartic for me, I just can't deny the personal punch of this book when making my rankings.

Also, Hermione slaps Draco and I'm pretty sure we can pinpoint that moment as the sexual awakening of Ronald Weasley.

Actual Ranking: 1

Rowling has gone on record saying that the Dementors represent depression. This metaphor comes from a deeply personal place for her. They are the death of her mother. They are the failure of her first marriage. They are her struggle to raise a child while living on welfare. They are also Harry's greatest fear.

I didn't know that when I read this book, but I don't think it's an accident that reading it, my heart ached for Harry. Of all the books, this one is the most tender. Harry is vulnerable to the Dementors because of the tragedy he has faced, and he is at times both desperate to escape their influence and tempted to wallow in the memories they bring - memories of his parents' voices, which he can't hear any other way.

Lupin tries to teach him how to face one, emphasizing happy memories as the most powerful means of projecting a Patronus charm. But in the end, he finally succeeds by projecting not a memory, but a hope for his future, that he's going to live with Sirius and finally have a real family again. In the end, it isn't a hope that comes true, but it's enough to get him a little farther.

That message meant so much to me as a young girl. Even though my heart ached when he lost both Sirius and Lupin, his first real connections to his parents, I felt sure things would be all right. Of all the Harry Potter books, this one strikes me the most as being about the inherent value of hope. When Harry expresses his frustration that all he's tried to do hasn't amounted to anything, Dumbledore reminds him that by helping Sirius escape, he's saved two lives, and those two lives have value. The previous two years, Harry was able to fix everything, but this time he must learn to look forward with hope, even when things are difficult.

That theme is also well personified in Lupin, who is kind and decent, even though he's been dealt a hard hand, much like Harry. I love Lupin so much. He exuded goodness, even with his frailties, and while I got annoyed with him a little in Book 7, I do think his issues with commitment were well set-up by his backstory. In the end, he is good and kind and maybe wants people to like him a bit too much, since he's been handed so much hatred. Overall, a wonderful character.

The emotional resonance has always been what I come back to with this book, but it also has my favorite mystery. I love how the story of Harry's parents is revealed. This was also the first book to make liberal use of clues that were sewn several books in advance. Sirius is mentioned in the very first chapter of Book 1. The Whomping Willow is a fun set piece in Book 2, but plays a much larger role here. And most importantly...

TIME TRAVEL!!!!!!!!

I have mixed feelings on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and one of the main reasons why is because the books complicate how time travel works in Harry Potter, and not for the better. What I love about how it's used here, is that time travel can't alter the fact that time is a fixed loop. Harry sees himself stop the dementors, and then he stops the dementors. I love time travel when it's used this way, and it's a fun ending to the mini-mystery that Ron kept trying to solve (but rarely bothered Harry) of how Hermione was attending all her classes.

I struggle to find any weaknesses in this book, though for those who don't like Book 3, I'll admit it can be quite dark. That's kind of what you get when half the plot is a metaphor for battling depression. Plus, there is the sheer weirdness of, um... Ron's rat being the man who betrayed Harry's parents. I had to reread that line the first time I read the book. But, hey! It was a twist I didn't see coming.

CONCLUSIONS!!!

The longer I write, the more pessimistic I get about certain things. I often find myself looking at long series and thinking "man, what are the odds all of those are equally good?" Even with Harry Potter, I don't think Rowling got it all right. I know I have my favorites.

But so do you.

And that's the thing I keep coming back to. Even with the variations between them, I don't think the series has a particularly "weak link." I've looked at enough fan polls to know that favorites tend to follow two patterns. First, that Prisoner of Azkaban usually takes the largest chunk of votes, but never an outright majority. Second, that all the books have their defenders. The series gave all of us something we needed at some point.

And by all of us, I mean all of us who read them. For those who didn't... what on earth did you read this giant list of spoilers for? Go read the books!