It's light reading, that's for sure. The Harry Potter series, I mean. I don't have to think while reading it. I can just submerge myself, lose myself, and let the words -- some of them quite clever -- and phrases and characters and ideas wash over me without much analysis. I can ponder the fates of the characters without stopping to wonder about the realism of it. I can find sympathy for some, and antipathy for others. I can scoff, wrinkle my nose, giggle, or smile fondly. It takes me away from things in my life that sometimes seem to want to devour me and leave nothing behind. It's Calgon© for the soul.
I am an adult. My kids, however, grew up with the bespectacled young wizard. They spent their coming-of-age years devouring the books -- staying up all night to read the entire thing, cover to cover, standing in lines at midnight to see the movies. They were part and parcel of Potter-mania. And now as young adults, on their own, they've done the same with the seventh and final book in the series. They express deep regret that the series is over, that they swallowed the books so quickly.
Potter did not teach my children to read. Their father and I did that. Potter did not teach them to love books. Potter-mania, the hype and ecstasy of it, did not lure them from their computers and televisions and video games into books. They already had a love for books when Potter came along. My son obsessed over The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and both kids were often seen with their noses in award winning novels that were beyond their presumed reading level. They continue to read to this day.
But there exist among us those who have always scoffed at Potter, or outright declared the books a form of evil. And their antitheses -- those who claimed that these books alone were responsible for luring the young into the world of reading.
Now, ten years after the first Potter book, along comes a sort of Death Eater of editorialists, who brings with him some numbers and facts that suggest that reading in general is on the decline, regardless of age. Potter did not keep youngsters, he says, reading. And Potter or no, people are just plain not going to the libraries. His words suggest that the money spent hyping Potter should've been better spent hyping more diverse works.
Maybe the trend is there; I haven't done my own number crunching.
I do know that in my youth, I was an aberration and even in my adulthood, what set me and my few friends apart was that we were lured toward books and reading, while so many around us had other pursuits. I could be found consuming almost anything readable. My peers were mostly out playing games, or watching TV. Adult peers who asked me what I enjoyed looked at me pityingly when I said I loved to read; they preferred skiing or camping or shopping. When I asked what they read, they pointed to a magazine or maybe a best-seller that they'd picked up to read on the airplane.
A small number of us, though, exchanged loved books and met new authors, and had -- and continue to have -- up to date library cards.
I remain unconvinced that Potter lured kids to become readers, but I also remain unconvinced that there is a death knell to be sounded for reading at all.
My daughter, nearly 40, is also a Potter fan. He didn't lure her, she just loves that sort of stuff, always did, the movies too. I don't have a clue what these library stats about reading prove. The industry is very liberal--maybe they just did better when they were conservative?
I think a lot of kids learned that books can be all right maybe, but yeah, I don't see any great change from our day. I love the title of your post. I hated -- well, let's say I failed to finish -- the first HP book. Why? Light reading it is, and light reading fails me. I couldn't set aside the absurdity of gaining our sympathy by putting the child into situations that in the real world would land several adults in jail. If it had been placed a century ago, different story. ("I'm too serious.")
Well, keep in mind it is first and foremost a children's book as well as being a fantasy. And what did we grow up with, but Johnny Quest and its ilk -- fantasies wherein children were in sticky situations. So we all could identify with the heros.
What makes the Potter series interesting to me is that Harry is an average person. Totally average. He's not stupid, but not always all that bright. He's prone to fits of unreasoning anger. He is a mediocre student. He is special ONLY because he had been singled out by the bad guy and inexplicably, through no power of his own, survived AND he's surrounded by smart caring people, AND he's just plain lucky at times. Kids and adults can both identify with that.