Joanne K. Rowling began writing her first little stories at the age of six. By nine, she had read all the stories by Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. Jane Austen remains one of her favorite authors. In 1990, during a train journey, Rowling came up with the idea for the Harry Potter stories. She spent five years solely imagining the wizarding world and the seven parts of the story. "I still remember an incredible number of somewhat ridiculous details about Harry's world that the reader doesn't need to know," she says. The Scottish author hadn't originally intended to write books for children, but then she realized how easily she could immerse herself in her own childhood. "I can remember everything from the age of 11 without any difficulty," she shares. "As a child, you feel very powerless, and that's why you have this own world that adults cannot access." Even though there are indeed adults at Harry's boarding school, Harry and his friends repeatedly get to experience things on their own - and it is exactly this feeling of being able to make decisions independently that young readers love and find reflected in Harry Potter's stories. Joanne K. Rowling, a teacher from Edinburgh, wrote the first book of the Harry Potter series as a 31-year-old unemployed single mother - and overnight she became a bestseller. 27 million readers in 28 countries are rooting for Harry and eagerly awaiting the next installments. In Germany and England, she was named Author of the Year, received the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, the Children's Book Award from the Young Readers' Jury, was among the top 10 in Bremen, and won the British Book Award for Children's Books twice in a row.