Cheryl Klein Interviewed

The Continuity Editor (if you don't know what that is, read the excerpt!) for the Harry Potter books, Cheryl Klein, was interviewed through Access Atlanta. She is attending the Decatur Book Festival in Atlanta, GA.

One of the Decatur Book Festival highlights for younger readers may be the “Harry Potter Trivia Quiz,” in which a limited number of kids, all under age 18, will be invited onstage Aug. 30 to test their wizarding skills and win prizes, including deluxe editions of Potter books and gift certificates to Decatur’s Little Shop of Stories.
The fest has tapped Cheryl Klein to judge the quiz. Klein was Scholastic Books’ continuity editor on the Potter books, which made her one of the leading experts on all things Harry.

She talks about her role with editing the books, as well as the Harry Potter quiz for the festival.

Q: What does a continuity editor do?
A: Continuity editor is a title we made up to describe what I was doing on the Harry Potter books, which was keeping track of all the facts. There’s copy editing facts, like Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. Every time that it appears, does Every Flavor have a hyphen in it? Do we take out the “u” from “flavour” for the Americanized spelling? And I also help the primary editor keep track of where all the characters are, where all the magical implements are, ‘cause the plotting is so intricate.

Q: Did you ever catch a mistake that Rowling made, like a line where Snape has three kids named Moe, Larry and Curly?
A: Changes like that did come up. Talking about them is a little like violating lawyer-client privilege. It’s the author’s job to talk about those.

Q: Now that the Potter books are all done, what are you doing?
A: I’m back to my full-time job, which is editing other books for Scholastic.

Q: Have you done a lot of Harry Potter trivia contests?
A: I’ve never actually overseen a Harry Potter trivia contest. But I love trivia and I love Harry, so that will be great.

Q: If this is your first time as a judge, how are you preparing?
A: I hope to have all seven books with me. Oftentimes my job with Harry is not so much knowing all the facts myself, but like a good librarian, knowing where the facts are located. If somebody says when was the Wizarding Statute of Secrecy put in, my job is knowing where we can find that information verified in the books.

Read the full article, including things about the Festival, here!