The Power of Potter
Can the teenage wizard turn a generation of halfhearted readers into lifelong bookworms?
Ben Buchanan made absolutely sure his schedule would be clear this week. Like millions of Americans, the Texas teen is devouring the 672 pages of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , the sixth book in the uberpopular series by J. K. Rowling. And that's quite a feat in Buchanan's case. When he got the first Harry Potter book as a Christmas present back in 1998, he was struggling with dyslexia. "I just thought it would be another book I wouldn't like," says Buchanan, who was ready to toss it out with the wrapping paper. Then his mom read the first chapter aloud to him, and he was determined to conquer his first "real" book.
As the world eagerly cracks open the newest volume, whose initial U.S. run of 10.8 million copies is a publishing record, the true mystery isn't the identity of the royal figure in the title. It's what impact these books are having on kids. Are they converting nonreaders like Buchanan? Are they capable of helping other books defeat TV and video games in the battle for children's free time? More than 100 million of Rowling's books are in print in the United States alone, and everyone has heard anecdotes about kids fervently reading and rereading each title. But whether all of this hype of countdowns and midnight trips to bookstores translates into a lifelong reading habit remains unclear.
If our society ever needed a reading renaissance, it's now. The National Endowment for the Arts released "Reading at Risk" last year, a study showing that adult reading rates have dropped 10 percentage points in the past decade, with the steepest slump among those 18 to 24. "Only one half of young people [in that age bracket] read a book of any kind--including Harry Potter --in 2002. We set the bar almost on the ground. If you read one short story in a teen magazine, that would have counted," laments Mark Bauerlein, the NEA's director of research and analysis. He attributes the loss of readers to the booming world of technology, which woos would-be leisure readers to iPods, E-mail, IM chats, and video games and leaves them with no time to curl up with a novel.
These new forms of media undoubtedly have some benefits, says Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You . Video games improve problem-solving skills; TV shows promote mental gymnastics by forcing viewers to follow intertwining story lines. But books offer experience that can't be gained from these other sources, from building vocabulary to stretching the imagination. "If they're not reading at all," says Johnson, "that's a huge problem."
In fact, fewer kids are reading for pleasure. According to data released last week from the National Center for Educational Statistics's long-term trend assessment, the number of 17-year-olds who reported never or hardly ever reading for fun rose from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004. At the same time, the percentage of 17-year-olds who read daily dropped from 31 to 22.
This slow but steady retreat from books has not yet taken a toll on reading ability. Scores for the nation's youth have remained constant over the past two decades (with an encouraging upswing among 9-year-olds). But given the strong apparent correlation between pleasure reading and reading skills, this bodes poorly for the future.
That's why many educators are hoping the Harry Potter series can work some magic.
Spellbound. "It's broken the rules," says Cathy Denman, a middle school media specialist in Florida who chairs the young adult booklist for the International Reading Association (IRA), an organization for literacy professionals. "Kids who hadn't picked up a book in years unless they'd been forced to were reading the series and then asking me for more books like it. For the first time for them, a book was as exciting as a video game." Although there have been no comprehensive studies of the effect of the books in the United States, the U.K.-based Federation of Children's Book Groups just released figures showing that 59 percent of U.K. kids think the books have improved their reading skills and 48 percent say the books are why they read more.
Part of the allure is the thrilling story, with well-developed characters and an avalanche of magical moments. That's what ensnared precocious readers like 12-year-old Hannah Bredar of Washington, D.C., who tackled the first book when she was just 5. "I love that Harry lives in two worlds, one with Muggles and one with wizards and witches, and has to go between the two," she analyzes.
More critically, the books enchanted struggling readers as well--kids like 17-year-old Mike Cossairt of Stafford, Va., who credits Harry Potter for his discovery of pleasure reading and its effects. "I had pretty bad English grades, but then I increased my vocabulary and started to do better," says Cossairt, who now enjoys titles like Of Mice and Men . Although the Harry books grow more complex with each installment, the series structure gives kids a basis of knowledge to work from--like what Hogwarts is all about and that Draco Malfoy kind of sucks. That makes it easier to get through a book a reader wouldn't have been able to understand otherwise. It also didn't hurt that grown-ups fell for Harry, too, giving children and parents a book to read together and talk about.
Blastoff. At Denman's Florida middle school, peer pressure even motivated remedial English students, who originally couldn't handle the Potter books. "They were missing out on something, even when they watched the movies," she says. "It became one of those things you needed to know." So, like Buchanan, they slowly slogged through. Buchanan, who wrote a book about his experience, My Year With Harry Potter , recalls, "Reading for me was like being an astronaut. I liked the idea of it, but I couldn't do it. After Harry Potter, I could." It was the same at countless other schools. According to the NPD Group, in May 2001, nearly 3 out of 4 kids ages 11 to 13 had read at least one Harry Potter volume.
In fact, Harry Potter may be the first (and only) literary status symbol for the young. University of Nevada-Reno Prof. Diane Barone has just completed a seven-year study following the reading habits of 16 low-income kids from kindergarten to sixth grade. Her timing coincided with the release of the Harry Potter books, and their stamp on these children's lives was unmistakable. "In second or third grade, they all started carrying around the books even though they couldn't read them," she explains. "By fifth and sixth grade, they'd all read them. It was a status thing. They wanted to be part of the club."
Joining the Potter club was a smart move. The students in Barone's study gained stronger reading skills than she originally thought they would. Of her group, 14 achieved or surpassed the benchmarks for reading at grade level. Although hardworking teachers receive most of the credit, Barone gives Harry Potter his due. She noted a sense of accomplishment in the children once they had read the Potter books and watched them take on more challenging titles.
That's not to say every child jumped on the bandwagon. The antibook bias remains strong among middle schoolers. Chelsea Guy, a 13-year-old from Knoxville, Tenn., is a member of Amazon.com's panel of Harry Potter fans recruited to predict what happens in the new book; her friends were reluctant at first to try the series. "A lot of kids won't touch a book, but I bargained with a few of them and convinced them to read Harry Potter," she says. "They don't want to let people know they're reading because they're worried the popular kids will make fun of them."
Reversing peer pressure is remarkable, but some people believe it wasn't simply Rowling's writing that turned the tide. "It's appealing, it's cute, it's witty, but it's very conventional," says Jack Zipes, a professor at the University of Minnesota and author of Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children's Literature From Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter . "It's popular because of marketing." Richard Allington, president of the IRA, agrees that movies, fast-food tie-ins, and toys give a book extra kid cred. "When you commercialize a book, the audience expands," he says. "I can't say that's a bad thing."
Why don't other books get the same push? asks Kevin Smokler, editor of Bookmark Now , an anthology of late-teenage-to-30ish writers discussing the future of literature. The Potter promotion has "made reading an event with the glitz of a movie premiere," he says. "It's an amazing experiment of how we'll deal with books in the 21st century." For children, dressing up and dragging their parents to a bookstore at midnight is a memorable experience. More book events could get people excited about reading again. "If there's a memoir about a firefighter, I want to see a Dalmatian and a hose at the bookstore," he says. Incorporating books into pop culture, rather than separating them into something refined and rarefied, can make literature more accessible--the way Harry Potter is.
Unfortunately, poor kids aren't always part of the Potter universe. Although the children in Barone's study managed to snag copies of the books, that's not often the case. It's what Allington calls the "good reader" effect. Kids who are already proficient readers or who have parents with enough time and energy to help them with problem spots are enjoying the Harry Potter books, but other kids don't get the opportunity. (And they arguably need the books the most--kids from lower socioeconomic strata tend to have the lowest reading scores.) "My fear is that this is another case of the rich get richer because they're the ones most likely to experience it," Allington says. Rebecca Constantino, founder of Access Books, a nonprofit based in Los Angeles that stocks school libraries, echoes his concerns. "I don't know many inner-city kids who are excited about the sixth book coming out," she says. "It's months to wait for it at the library, and then they'll forget about it. They're going to give up."
Yet if these underprivileged kids can get hold of the Potter books, they're likely to be hooked. Gillian Williams was principal of PS 63, an elementary school in the South Bronx, N.Y., catering to poor children, when she discovered the first book in 1998 and sent it home with a student. "Next thing I knew, he was loan-sharking this book out, and it went through the fifth grade like wildfire," she says. Before long, students had formed a Harry Potter fan club and had persuaded teachers to throw a Harry Potter day, during which they played math-based quidditch. In the summer of 2000, when the fourth book came out, she drove the club to a Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side because there was no bookstore in their neighborhood.
The experience was transformative for Williams, who can't help but gush about Harry Potter. "I go from being professional to going berserk," she apologizes. She has since left PS 63 to found School Turnaround, a nonprofit that helps struggling schools get back on track, and as she works with their teachers, she tries to pass on the lesson she learned from Harry Potter: "Unless kids want to read, you can't make them do it." But once a book captures their attention, she adds, teachers can use elements of the story to excite students about their classes.
Confused by suffused. As much as educators like Williams adore Harry Potter, the feeling is far from universal. Some teachers say less-advanced readers are scared off by the heft of the tomes, along with their advanced vocabulary (quick, get your 10-year-old to define "contemptuous" or "suffused") and potentially confusing fantasy elements (um, hippogriffs?). "If a teacher can get children to read more by using Harry Potter, I'm all for it," says Zipes, who also runs a children's literacy program in Minneapolis. "I can only tell you that the kids I work with aren't reading them." For those children, the crucial trick is selecting titles that will turn them on--like Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which Allington prefers for readers who find Harry too foreboding because of length and plot structure. The more kids read, the more comfortable they are with books, and the better they are at it. "It's hard to find a good reader who doesn't like to read," says Barbara Kapinus of the National Education Association.
If Harry Potter doesn't lure kids in, maybe comic books will. That's what librarians are finding, as they reel in book-wary students with comics, graphic novels, and manga, the genre of Japanese comics. "Kids exist in a visual world, and comic books are a natural mode of text for them," says Ben Towle, cofounder of the National Association of Comics Art Educators, which is promoting the use of these works in literacy programs as well as other school subjects.
Skeptics may still think of comics as trash lit. But Michele Gorman, an Austin librarian, is a believer. "They're fun, but they're not always easy to read. The vocabulary can be advanced, as can the imagery," she says. That's why she's focusing on the library's comics collection. After all, Maus by Art Spiegelman, the graphic novel telling of his father's story of survival during the Holocaust, is as powerful as (if not more than) any plain-prose volume, and Jeff Smith's Bone series, about three cousins who get separated in a weird world, is often compared with The Lord of the Rings .
Pick pix. Comics can be a blessing for less confident readers. The art gives clues that promote enjoyable reading. "Clearly, literacy is happening. Kids are talking about books," Gorman says. And even a manga addict might segue into more-traditional novels. Gorman noticed a video-game fanatic playing a game similar to The Lord of the Rings , so she dug up her copy of the graphic-novel version of The Hobbit . When he returned, he told her it was the best book he'd ever read, and he wanted more. So she slipped him the J. R. R. Tolkien trilogy (without pictures). He devoured that, too.
A big obstacle in hooking kids on books as Gorman did, many educators say, is the way schools have evolved. "Teachers are under pressure to accomplish goals for tests. Reading out loud goes by the wayside," says University of Maryland Prof. Mariam Jean Dreher. School library visits are often scheduled appointments; to speed along the study of a topic, many teachers rely on worksheets instead of books. "Why should students think [reading] is important if we don't give them time to do it?" Denman asks.
Boy lit. Lack of choice is part of the problem. Not every child shares the same taste--boys are particularly underserved when it comes to appealing book options--so the books that are assigned can easily strike out. Former elementary school teacher and popular author Jon Scieszka says this arrangement has to change: "We've structured it so kids think of reading like medicine. It tastes bad, but it's good for you."
"A teacher has 25 copies of the same book and marches through it--if you want to ruin a book, that's a good way to do it," says Allington. "When you create choice, you create engaged readers." Just ask Cheryl Hinterleitner, 14, who showed up at a Harry Potter book discussion at the Porter branch of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Virginia two weeks ago dressed as a member of the Weasley family, eating Voldetorte (a chocolate confection) and gushing about the other books she's got on her shelf, like everything by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, who writes about vampires. But what about what she has to read for school? "I hated the selection so much that I'm writing my own," she declared. It's going to be about vampires.
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.
This story appears in the July 25, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.