SOURCE: “Potter's Field,” in Horn Book Magazine, Vol. 75, No. 5, September–October, 1999, pp. 500–01.

In the following review, Sutton ponders the uproar over Harry Potter.

On this occasion of our 75th anniversary issue, I'm reminded what a constant presence the past is at the Horn Book offices. When, as we do here with some regularity, we invoke past editors of the Horn Book, we don't bother with chronology. They aren't Back Then but (with the exception of my immediate predecessor) Up There and at the same time, with physical as well as intellectual evidence at hand, Still Here. We often call upon them while assigning books for review. Something arcanely Anglophilic? “Assign it to Ethel.” A new book about Babe Ruth? We wonder if baseball fan Anita Silvey can be lured back to bat for two hundred words or so. I outrage the doll collectors of America (see last issue's...