The Order of the Harry-Haters

Great Expectations is written in a way that asks to be read slowly, and re-read. It is a book with rich and complex characters. Even the “bit-players” of Great Expectations are more complex than the cardboard figures of Harry, Hermione and Ron. Think only of Trabb’s boy, or the glorious Mr Wopsle. The child to whom I read Great Expectations asked for Mr Wopsle’s reenactment of the newspaper crime reports to be read over and over, along with Mr Jagger’s reproof. Even single sentences had to be repeated over and over again, such as Magwitch’s claiming to have been brought up to be “a warmint”.

Who has ever gone back to a particular passage of Harry Potter to read it again and again, whether for the beauty of the prose or the vividness and poignancy of the character? On the contrary, the impetus of the Harry Potter marketing campaign is all about getting to the end of the book.

The great “secret” of the last two books in the series, carefully stage-managed by JK Rowling’s teasers and the censure of spoilers, concerns who is left alive at the end of the book. That is, what happens “in the end”?

Bloomsbury Press issued a press release “to thank the worldwide media for their own observance of, and strict policing of, the embargo to preserve the secrecy of the plot for the readers of Harry Potter”. If “the secrecy of the plot” is broken, the fear is that children would not need to buy the book.

Some time ago, I asked the mother of a very young boy whether she read to him. Oh no, she said, my son doesn’t let me read any more because I am too slow. With great pride, she told me that her son was a “speed reader”. I shuddered. As a teacher at university, one of my aims is to get students to slow down, to take more than two minutes to read a page while making some fluorescent marks on it. I don’t want students to get to the end of Plato’s Republic too quickly. I want them to stop and think and dream and imagine over a page, even over a sentence - and then do it all over again.

It is sometimes said that even if the Harry Potter books are written badly, nevertheless they whet children’s (and adults’) appetite for reading, that is, that Potter readers will then move on to other books. This is simply not the case. For example, the US National Endowment for the Arts survey report of 2004, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading (PDF 683KB) found that less than half the American adult population now reads literature (defined as any novels, short stories, poetry or plays not required for work or school), and the percentage continues to fall regardless of Bloomsbury’s publishing schedule.

The US National Assessment of Education Progress found that the percentage of children who read for fun almost every day drops significantly between fourth and eight grades, at the same rate in 2005 as when the first of the Harry Potter books was published in 1998.

The path from reading Harry Potter is less likely to lead to reading The Wind in the Willows, say, than to pestering parents to buy a stuffed Hedwig toy, a ticket to a Harry Potter movie, or entrance to “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter” theme park.

I do not remember having read Wind in the Willows as a child, although I vaguely remembered the characters, especially Mr Toad and his love of motor cars. So I delighted in the opportunity to read the book to my own child. In reading it, I realised that such books are too hard for children to read for themselves when they are at the very age at which the books are interesting to them. A book like Wind in the Willows regains its interest only much later, for adults taking delight in reading to their children on the double bed.

It is a great loss for a child to have missed out having The Wind in the Willows read to him or her. There is an incident in the book, for example, when the Rat and the Mole are hurrying along their path when poor Mole senses that he has passed his old home.

Mole drops on a tree stump and despite his efforts to control himself, bursts into tears:

“The sob he had fought with so long refused to be beaten. Up and up, it forced its way to the air, and then another, and another, and others thick and fast; till poor Mole at last gave up the struggle, and cried freely and helplessly and openly, now that he knew it was all over and he had lost what he could hardly be said to have found.”

With a quiet tenderness, Ratty inquires of his friend, “What is it, old fellow? Whatever can be the matter? Tell us your trouble, and let me see what I can do.”