So is it Taboo?

[Savion]

To have your main character go to Boarding School or any type of school in a fantasy realm without being referenced to harry potter(Which not a bad thing per-say)and is their a way around that to make your own is it possible? or is it fertile?

Are their other taboo's?

[Rachel]

There have been boarding schools in fiction since way before Harry Potter - I wouldn't, personally, assume that a writer had got the idea from HP just because they happened to set a book in a school. :)

[Savion]

Most people now a days will mark it as harry potter and i know schools have been used way before j.k Rowling put it in her book.But in general that book made it popular again and she set the bar pretty damn high.

[Kevin]

Nobody I think can make the school settling as detailed as Rowlings did. It was basically her world settling.

[Danielle The Book Huntress]

I think that unfortunately, once a book in a certain genre gets big, anything that is remotely associated with an idea gets labeled as derivative. Writers have to follow their muse. I don't see anything wrong with going with an idea, even if you are afraid that it will compared to the "The Next Big Thing." It's still your own creature, and it will have your own stamp on it.

Unfortunately, there is nothing truly new under the sun. It's just a matter of taking something known and giving it your own spin.

[Bill]

Ha! I use boarding-school as a keyword in my local book and video databases.

Boarding school books are legion.

[Annette]

The boarding school setting gives a convenient and clear time span for a story - and then for a series if it covers a complete time at school.

[[deleted user]]

How common are boarding schools across the pond, Nicki? I've always found the concept bewildering. Your kids up grow so fast as it is. Sending them away for the majority of the year when they're just kids always struck me as kind of a shitty substitute for parenting

[[deleted user]]

*nods* Makes sense

[Savion]

So it was like jail

[[deleted user]]

Where are you from Savion? Australia/New Zealand area by chance?

[Bill]

☠The Dread Pirate Grant☠ wrote: "How common are boarding schools across the pond, Nicki? I've always found the concept bewildering. Your kids up grow so fast as it is. Sending them away for the majority of the year when they're..."

But, many of the best 'literary' boarding school novels are British, if period. I'm thinking of things like Maurice, Brideshead Revisited and such or things like Counterpoint: Dylan's Story for a more modern work. There are many others.

[Savion]

Grant

I live in America

[[deleted user]]

Ah. The name and quirky questions threw me off. I would have guessed New Zealand/Australia or Eastern European before I'd have hit the Americas. Go figure :)

[[deleted user]]

I also thought your pic was a really big ear until I clicked on your profile. Shows what I know ;)

[Annette]

A fair number of British Boarding Schools are filled from over seas - we can't afford them even if we wanted to.

I also loved Enid Blyton's idea of life at a Boarding School (although even she sometimes touched on the suggestion of bullying) yet would never dream of sending my children away - especially from very young. But then Enid Blyton wasn't actually supposed to b the warmest of parents.

I thought it was an ear too! It's like an optical illusion.

[[deleted user]]

I thought it was an ear too.

Grants looks like a movie marquee from far away.

[Savion]

Damn they discovered the illusion.

[[deleted user]]

Lol...sorry to bust ya out there, brother. And yeah, Ala, mines only awesome when you actually see it on my profile :)

[Savion]

Fuck yea,Grant

The Princess Bride.. lol

[[deleted user]]

Lol...attaboy, Savion :)

[Jason]

Is it a school for magic? If so, then I'd scratch that idea. If it's just a bourding school, then you should be okay. I think.

[Kasia]

I think it was a profile of a sheep or goat lol

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*, *good karma*]

I thought it was an ear, too. :-)

Not to say anything, but Mercedes Lackey has had a "boarding school" in Valdemar for several series now. :-)

[Mike (the Paladin)]

I don't have a problem with a book set in a boarding school... I don't even have a problem about a kid or kids set in a boarding school that teaches magic. The writer just needs to be aware that it will be compared to Harry Potter..

(Now all that's assuming that the person really isn't ripping off the plot or story, that will show up in a heartbeat.)

BUT, that being said, there are really no actually "new stories" and few "new settings". I'm sure for years after Lord of the Rings became the hottest thing since American Bandstand everyone said any fantasy novel (especially long involved well written ones) were copying that book. As has been pointed out, there have been "magic school" books around for a long, long time and there will be more.

Actually I think it's been long enough now since the books hit, that the furor is dying down a bit. Once the last movie has made it's splash and faded a bit it will be easier on "magic school" (boarding and otherwise) novels.

[Traci]

It's funny no one ever seems to include The Name of the Wind as a magic school fantasy. But it sort of is, isn't it?

[[deleted user]]

I like the take on the old boarding school paradigm in The Talisman-kind of turns everything upside-down. Y'all get schooled, alright. Think that as long as fantasy tells epic tales,with coming of age and rites of passage being part ot the traditional telling of such tales, there will be boarding schools, or variations of.

[Mawgojzeta]

One of my favorite boarding school fantasy books is Charlotte Sometimes, which would not bring to mind Harry Potter in any way at all.

[Mike (the Paladin)]

A series I liked at least at first (we're speaking of youth books here) was the Charlie Bone series. Again it's a series of books I found in audio back when I was searching out audio books for my ill wife.

It does put one in mind of the Harry Potter books a bit in that it's a sort of reverse (Hogwart's) boarding school situation. The "evil people" run the boarding school. I never finished the series, but it wasn't bad.

[Jea0126]

Mercedes Lackey's books all have her characters go to the Collegium which is similar to a boarding school of sorts. She had that idea way before Rowling ever got started.

[MrsJoseph *grouchy*, *good karma*]

Jea0126 wrote: "Mercedes Lackey's books all have her characters go to the Collegium which is similar to a boarding school of sorts. She had that idea way before Rowling ever got started."

^what he said.