Kaytek the Wizard novel.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaytek_the_Wizard

Did you ever read this book? I was totally O-B-S-E-S-S-E-D with it as a preteen and in my teenagehood, I reread it many, many times, borrowing it from a library because unlike now I didn't have my own copy then, although I was way too old for reading it - I was embarassed to borrow it because I was for example already 16 then. Objectively speaking, it is not a very well written book, what is more, its langauge isn't too rich but it turned out to be really great food for my ungovernable imagination I imagined the rich man from the novel who at some point gave the order to his people to kidnap Kaytek, so as he could raise him as his son, wanted to adopt me

"Kaytek" got translated some years ago into English so maybe someone of you has encountered it even if it's a children's book? I won this novel in an online contest some months ago. This week, I also watched the movie based on the book, its on Polish Netflix - it's a new movie, it was made maybe a year ago but it is very different from the book I loved back in my late childhood and teenagehood.

the boy wizard? he resembles Harry Potter. Did the author draw inspiration from the Harry Potter books?

On the opposite, it was Mrs. Rowling who got accused by Poles of stealing the idea of Janusz Korczak, the Polish author of this book. The very book got published in the 30's so many years before Harry Potter appeared on the sheets of the books by her and in the hearts of his fans. Kaytek himself doesn't attend any magic school, he just learnt magic by himself. He lives in Warsaw, the Polish capital city with his parents and grandmother who dies later on. He travels all over the world and has many adventures, like he becomes a Hollywood star and gets turned into a dog together with his friend, Zosia.

Actually, some Poles claimed Mrs. Rowling stole the idea of the name of Harry Potter from some little known Polish short story on a teenage boy whose name was Harry Potter and no, he wan't a wizard It's a short story from the seventies but it wasn't even translated into English.

What is more possible is that JKR borrowed some ideas for her novels from the "Academy of Mr. Kleks", another Polish book (there is actually the whole book series): https://charactermichael.wordpress.com/ ... -mr-kleks/