Pottermania is just as evident on Staten Island as it is in the rest of the world. Fans of Harry Potter held “Midnight Magic” parties here Friday waiting for the final book in the series, which would arrive at the stroke of 12. They showed up at the Barnes & Noble store on Richmond Avenue wearing signature Potter eyeglasses and his famous lightning-bolt forehead scar.

The phenomenon of a book causing such excitement in children used to every technological gadget and game pales in comparison, however, to the phenomenon that is J.K. Rowling.

One would think the rags-to-riches tale of a former single mother on welfare who is now richer than Queen Elizabeth would generate more ink. Instead, much of the controversy about the “Harry Potter” novels seems to come from Christian evangelicals who regard the boy wizard’s saga as anti-Christian and celebrating magic and witchcraft.

In 1999, I wrote a column for the Staten Island Advance defending Halloween and Harry Potter. A series of articles had suggested that children were delving more and more into Satanism. As my daughter was entranced with the novels, I wrote: “Harry Potter is a fictional character. If I thought that my daughter would be more influenced by him than by the religious values I have instilled in her over the years, then I obviously don’t have much faith in my own religion.”

I had no idea Staten Island had so many puritans, but the mail I received indicated that I had offended many devout Christians, who quoted several biblical passages to support their condemnation. I therefore plunged into reading all the “Harry Potter” books then in publication, and I discovered that Joanne Rowling is a brilliant writer.

For me, few novelists bear rereading — Graham Greene and Agatha Christie are two — but I have read each of the Potter books four times, and on Saturday, the postman dropped off three copies of Ms. Rowling’s latest for my family. Her writing is eerily atmospheric, and reading “Harry Potter” transports one to another realm where the battle between good and evil has become increasingly dark — not unlike our current reality.

Ms. Rowling has created a classic series, and any adult who thinks Harry Potter is for children only has lost the ability to fantasize. I have two senior citizen sisters who are just as enchanted as I am with Harry.

Potterphiles who feared that the films would spoil their enthusiasm have found instead that the remarkable settings have boosted their imagination. None of the films, however well done, compares to the novels themselves, and yes, I finished reading the seventh and last of the Harry Potter books and have no intention of spoiling the ending for others. There is something cruel about those individuals who posted spoilers on the Internet before the official release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” on July 21.

I can’t help but wonder what it was that distinguished this one single mother going through a rough patch in life from all the others seemingly stuck in neutral in the inner cities around the world. One thing may be that Ms. Rowling is an educated woman who earned her degree in French from the University of Exeter. She fought poverty after a failed marriage and the death of her mother from muscular dystrophy, and lived with her infant daughter in a vermin-invested flat on a meager welfare check. Unable to heat her home, she spent many hours in a coffee shop working on her manuscript, which she had dreamed up many years earlier.

Therein lies the clue to her success. Ms. Rowling had a dream and never gave it up. I can recall my own hours on the fire escape facing 110th Street daydreaming about my future as an artist or a writer. I was never told by the nuns in parochial school that this was impossible because I was poor, but that seems to be the subtle message some children are getting in the schools today. Academics are providing excuses for poor performance by blaming capitalism, society, the government, and the “man.” Their idea of boosting self-esteem is issuing pseudo-trophies and promoting failing students when they should be instilling confidence in students’ innate abilities.

I wonder how many people in that coffee shop wrote off J.K. Rowling as a typical loser, a single mother with a baby, living off their taxes. Are we doing the same thing — passing judgment, squelching dreams?

Ah, but judging a book by its cover is a great way to pass up another phenomenon.