An Open Letter to Warner Bros.

Please be gentle with Harry Potter.

I know it seems strange to be overprotective of a fictional 14-year-old who has survived five brushes with death (so far) and is the darling of the Magical world – not to mention us Muggle media. But Harry meets his toughest match next fall, when your film comes out.

I’m afraid the U.S. marketing machine is the one thing that can crush Harry’s magic.

This wizard-in-training rides a broomstick and conjures spells, but his real magic is his effect on kids, some of whom had never willingly read a whole chapter book before Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out in 1998.

For weeks after reading the first book, my eight-year-old showed up at the breakfast table with a line squiggled on her forehead in purple pen. At first, I thought she ran into something. Then I read her paperback, and I understood. She was wearing Harry’s scar. Without saying a word to us about it, she was Harry.

Before long my husband was hooked, too, and we were sending our daughter to bed early so we could read her books. When Goblet of Fire came out July 8, I got up early and stood in line outside the bookstore with a dozen other parents, most of whom had called ahead to reserve a copy. By the time I got home, a second copy had arrived via FedEx as a birthday gift – lucky thing, too, since the three of us took turns reading as much as we could that week.

They were always three chapters ahead of me, and had a blast teasing me at the dinner table, pretending to leak parts of the plot and making up their own twists. It tortured me, it really did. The last book I cared that much about was Stuart Little, and that’s back when I was the eight-year-old.

Harry Potter appeals to all ages. During summer camp, on Costume Day, my daughter and her 17-year-old counselor both arrived in black Hogwarts robes, and they both meant it. He was just jealous that he didn’t think to draw a lightening-bolt scar on his head, too.

Without official merchandising, kids have had to make their own fun so far. Harry’s world is so other-worldly that it seizes the imagination and lets kids (OK, adults too) transform their living rooms into invisible train platforms and fictitious boarding schools. They learn the rules to Quidditch, and hunt up common household objects like a broom and a pencil (just right for a magic wand) to play with. They fashion toys out of black cloth, Styrofoam balls, and glitter. Our local library hosted a Harry Potter party last spring, and the kids spent hours thinking up new flavors of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. That organic play is so genuine it makes marketers’ mouths water.

All the things that make Harry so compelling make him a great merchandising property. That’s what frightens me.

I heard a news story that estimates Potter gear will fetch as much as $1 billion a year, and I groaned. I saw the big lobby display in the Warner Bros. Studio Store on Park Ave., and I flinched. (I was also sorely tempted to buy a Griffyndor sweatshirt, but the store wasn’t open.)

My worry is that your merchandise will pin the character down, define him so thoroughly that kids’ own visions of Harry will blur, seem wrong, and then `Disapparate.’ Merchandising and marketing can squelch imagination.

Then, of course, there’s always the risk of overdoing it. With 50 or more licensees, we’re in for Harry Potter candy, Harry Potter trading cards, Harry Potter trivia games, Harry Potter bedsheets, Harry Potter picture frames, Harry Potter Christmas tree ornaments, Harry Potter pottery. The bigger it gets, the more kids will feel compelled to badge with it, and the more they’ll look to the marketplace for the connection they should keep finding in their own imaginations.

So please take care. We’ve got three more years at Hogwarts to look forward to, and with any luck, Harry will go on to University.