In Praise of Harry Potter

As a former elementary school teacher, a secondary English teacher, and now a university instructor helping those on their way to becoming teachers, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve heard “But kids don’t like to read anymore. They just want to play with their cell phones all day.” While I won’t argue with the playing with the cell phones part, I also know that there are many K-12 students who do love to read, and for many of those students that love for reading began with J.K. Rowling’s magical world of Harry Potter.

Like many of you, I was introduced to the Harry Potter books by some children I know, in my case my fifth grade students when I was teaching at a small private school in Southern California. My students carried the books around with them everywhere they went, read them in class whenever they could spare a minute, and at Halloween that year, boys and girls dressed as Harry with their round glasses, black gowns, and striped Hogwarts scarves. I hadn’t read the books yet, but any series that could get children interested in reading got a huge thumbs up from me. And, being the conscientious teacher I am, I wanted to know what my students were so excited about, so I started reading the books too. I was immediately hooked. Before I go on, I should explain that I had never been into the fantasy genre. I had, like other English majors before me, very classic, very Dickens, very old literary tastes, and the idea of reading a book about some kids at a magic boarding school wouldn’t have appealed to me on its own. But seeing my students read the books and listening to them rave about Harry and his friends made me reconsider, and I’m glad I did.

What a wonderful, magical, yet real world J. K. Rowling creates. I won’t bore you by singing praises to a series of books that have been praised by words more eloquent than mine. All I can say is that I was swept away into Harry’s world just as many others have been. These aren’t just black-word characters on white pages. These are real, living people to me, and I bet to many others too. Like many readers, I related most to Harry, acted mainly like Ron, though I always wished to be Hermione. When the new books came out, I bought and devoured them. And what a joy as a teacher seeing my students devour them as well. Children reading books? And enjoying them? Why, that doesn’t happen anymore!

There have been so many times when students have told me that Harry Potter helped them learn to love to read. A number of years ago I was teaching middle school in Boise, Idaho, and one of my students, an intelligent, thoughtful young man who was an ace at science, told me point-blank that he never touched a book before Harry Potter but then he began reading every Harry book as it came out and he read the entire series three times. Not only that, but he also began to read every other wizard/magic/fantasy book he could find. For J.K. Rowling to create a magical world that is as appealing to young readers as it is to adults is nothing short of a miracle. Beyond the obvious joy of bonding with my students over a shared love for all things Harry, those stories showed me that thoughtful, intelligent, meaningful stories can be written about anything, even something as seemingly outlandish as a boarding school for wizards.

For people who are still convinced that students don’t like reading, I respectfully disagree. If we can make a determined effort to discover books for younger readers that are smart, funny, engaging, even whimsical, then the next time we see young people staring at their cell phone screens they just might be reading a book.