The Power of Potter
Can the teenage wizard turn a generation of halfhearted readers into lifelong bookworms?
So how do you find books that kids can sink their teeth into? When Sean Cavazos-Kottke set up a reading program for ninth and 10th graders in Texas, he let his students pick from a list, then determine what kind of project they'd do about the book they read. One possible selection, to the chagrin of his teaching partner, was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone . "The assumption is that it's easy to read, and kids will never grow as a result. But there is a sophistication to Harry Potter in terms of wordplay and puns," he says. At the Witching Hour, an upcoming Harry Potter symposium in Salem, Mass., he plans to discuss the innovative projects kids created, including fan fiction, and how it was easier to get students to dig deeper into the familiar text for symbols and metaphors.
The real lesson in all of this isn't for the students, however--it's for parents and teachers. The Harry Potter books, for all the good they have undoubtedly done, are not a panacea for America's reading crisis. As Zipes says, "A book doesn't do magic. No one book will turn children into readers." What Rowling has managed to do, with the help of avid fans and clever marketers, is bring attention to the fact that children are not a lost cause. The reading crisis in America is real--and too big for Harry Potter alone to conquer. But the lesson of his success is clear: Twenty-first-century youngsters may live in an era where a mouse is a more natural tool than a pencil, and flashy images are just a remote-control click away, but they can still enjoy reading an old-fashioned book.
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