*headdesk*

[conuly]

Listen up, people. Just because two books (or a book and a book series...) happen to both take place in a boarding school and feature a train ride it does not mean that the second is based off of the first!

Harry Potter is not the originator of boarding school books. Newer books set in a boarding school may be profiting off of Harry Potter's fame, yes, but they're not necessarily derivative of Harry Potter. Instead, they and Harry Potter are both derivative of the same genre. Get it right!

(Also, formulaic isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's what you do with the formula that counts.)

*sighs*

It could be worse. They could be going after Tortall or Wizard's Hall or Worst Witch again.

Comments

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Wait...are you saying that Harry Potter ripped off The Facts of Life? They're both set at boarding schools, so they must the the same!!

;-]

That said, have you ever noticed the trend of Brit children's books focusing on orphans who have terrible things happen to them? Roald Dahl was huge with that too. Not sure if Lemony Snicket is a Brit or an American...but it's been a trend with kids books for some time.

[conuly]

It's a great way to get rid of inconvenient adults, isn't it? Nobody cares about the kid, nor do they have any real ties to him. Yay!

I don't know if it's limited to the Brits, but Dahl sure did popularize it. But his childhood was interesting, anyway.

In this case, just fyi, I'm talking about Knightley Academy. One person on Amazon called it "formulaic" (which it kinda is) and the rest of them all went "Just like Harry Potter! But with these five hundred differences!" Like, you know, the total lack of any fantasy element, the lack of cruel relations, the lack of undeserved fame, and... well, I could go on. "But they both start with a train ride!" Wow. Victorian-era children reached school by train. What a surprise.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

People are dumb. I don't even hang out in book forums, because of The Dumb. Ditto IMDB. It's impossible to have an intelligent conversation with people who think The Godfather sucked or that Wolfman ripped off Twilight.

[conuly]

I know!

The Twilight situation is worse, I think, though. In this case I'm reasonably confident that the other reviewers aren't very familiar with the boarding school genre at all.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Growing up (in England, and I actually WENT to a boarding school, but I just didn't board), I read TONS of boarding school books. My favorites were Enid Blyton's "Naughtiest Girl in the School" books. And I'm pretty sure they always took the train after summer holidays to get back to school.

[conuly]

Did your classmates take the train as well?

[sayga.livejournal.com]

No, actually at one point my school only had one boarder, sometimes there were 2 or 3 and sometimes none. They may have taken the train but they were in upper school so I didn't know them. I do remember my parents were going somewhere once and almost boarded my sister and I, but then decided to have a relative come watch us instead. I was a bit disappointed. I wanted to try boarding for a few weeks!

But the non-boarder classmates (most of us) were driven to school because we were close enough. I think boarding schools usually board because they have a good enough reputation that parents will send their kids far far away to go to that school. Like, my community college here doesn't have dorms because no one from Michigan is going to pick Pima Community College, but the University of Arizona DOES have dorms, because it's a higher ranked school with a reputation and all that. My school was a good school, but not good enough to attract kids from all over England to come to it.