My Romance with Harry Potter, Part 1

Until the spring of 2001, I was only dimly aware of Harry Potter as a popular children's series that some people were trying to ban (I had no idea why). That all changed on the first day of class in the sophomore survey I was teaching--British Literature, 18th century - Present. As I was going over the syllabus for the semester, a young man in the back raised his hand.

"Is this the section of this course that's doing the Harry Potter books?" he wanted to know.

I was taken aback by the way he phrased the question--he seemed certain that somebody would be teaching Harry Potter. When I told him that, as far as I knew, J. K. Rowling wasn't on anybody's syllabus, he was absolutely crushed. "You mean nobody's teaching Harry Potter?" It was as if his world no longer had meaning.

When the class was over, the young man stopped on his way out the door to ask despairingly, "Haven't you ever read the Harry Potter books?" Behind him, another student paused to hear my confession that no, I hadn't. "Oh, you should read them," the young woman announced confidently. "They're hot-diggity."

Maybe I'm reading too much into this episode, but the fact remains: both students dropped my course.

After that, I had no choice. I had to read the books. I hit my local library and slunk my way through the children's section, feeling strangely guilty and conspicuous, like a child molester hanging around a school playground. I expected to be challenged at any minute--"What do you think you're doing, lady?"--so I made up an elaborate story about a sick kid at home who had begged me to bring him a book, any book, to while away his lonely hours. (I don't have any children.) When I reached the Rs, I grabbed the only Harry Potter book on the shelf (The Goblet of Fire) without even looking at it and fled to the adult section of the library, where I loaded up on Margaret Atwood and other "literary" writers to shore up my credentials as an intellectual.

I was feeling pretty good until I saw the librarian at the circulation desk. Studly-looking guy, earring, purple silk shirt. I just knew he was going to give me grief about Harry, and I handed over my books with dread in my heart. Studly Guy checked out my books without comment, but when he came to Harry Potter, he paused and looked up, just as I'd known he would. I readied my cover story, heartlessly giving my fictional son chicken pox and a broken leg.

"Now, have you read the first three?" Studly Guy asked, his voice concerned. "Because you're going to ruin it for yourself if you read these out of order."

Safe!

Why We Should Take Children's Lit Seriously

As a graduate student, I never took a course in children's literature. In fact, I don't remember even being offered the opportunity. I do remember hearing one professor speak disparagingly of "kiddie lit," which I now realize is a controversial but widely-used term, but I had no idea that this was a field of legitimate study (and indeed, some scholars argue that it isn't). Children's/YA lit has gained grudging acceptance in the academy and I've read some truly outstanding scholarship on the subject, but I've learned most of what I know about this field from much younger experts.

Birth of a Book Group
Two years ago, I was asked to put together a fantasy/science fiction book group for readers between the ages of 10 and 15. I figured I could draw on some of my old favorites--A Wrinkle in Time, The Chronicles of Narnia, Alice in Wonderland--but I wasn't up on any current fiction except Harry Potter, so I went to my public library to do some research. I casually asked a librarian if she could recommend a few books and was overwhelmed by her response--Pat led me all over the junior and teen sections, showered me with lists of award-winning books, and fired authors and titles at me until I begged for mercy. We sat down at a table as I feverishly took notes, stumbling over the spelling of unfamiliar names like Sabriel and Abarat. I wish I could remember which title Pat was talking about when a young woman playing a computer game nearby suddenly turned around and said fervently, "That is SUCH a great book!" That's how I met Julia.

Julia joined us at the table and started rattling off all the books I absolutely had to read. After a while, her sister, Katherine, wandered over to see what we were doing, and soon both girls were darting into the stacks and bringing back armfuls of their favorite books, breathlessly providing plot summaries and arguing over which were the best. I've spent my life among books and people who love them, but it had been a long time since I had heard anyone talk about reading with such passion and urgency. I knew I had to get this book group up and running. Julia and Katherine became the first two members.

Next month the Gryffindors will celebrate our two-year anniversary (yes, I live in fear of being sued for copyright infringement, but we love the name). In addition to facilitating the meetings, I publish two newsletters, The Denton Runes and Dragonbites, to recommend books and advertise special events at the Denton Public Library and at the Barnes & Noble store where the group meets.

Here are some of the things I've learned over the past two years:

1. We are living in a second Golden Age of children's/YA literature, fueled by but certainly not limited to the Harry Potter phenomenon. (The first Golden Age was in the 19th century--more about that later.) There's just a lot of good stuff out there right now, including a number of books with very strong female heroes. I plan to talk about many of these books in more detail in future posts, but let me just list, in no particular order, some of the most impressive authors I've read: Shannon Hale, Scott Westerfeld, Jonathan Stroud, Philip Pullman, Patricia Wrede, Maiya Williams, Louis Sachar, Carl Hiaasen, Justine Larbalestier, Terry Pratchett, J. K. Rowling, Orson Scott Card, Gail Carson Levine, Rick Riordan, Vivian Vande Velde, and Gabrielle Zevin.

2. "Children's literature" covers a lot of territory, everything from soft-cover picture books for infants to racy teen reads like the Gossip Girl series (think Sex and the City for the Clearasil crowd and you've got the idea). This tendency to lump everything together under one umbrella term leads to confusion about what is age-appropriate. Harry Potter and Eragon may be extremely popular, but they're NOT for six-year-olds.

3. Children's/YA lit has a much larger audience than you might think. The Gryffindors was intended for tweens and young teens, but we had so many adults attend the first few meetings that I changed the description to "readers of all ages." Some are parents who come with their children; some are aspiring children's authors or fans of a particular book; others are college-age readers who find that YA books are more thought-provoking and original than adult fiction.

4. They may be writing for young readers, but these authors aren't kidding around (sorry, I couldn't resist that one). They're taking on serious issues and creating real art.

• Cornelia Funke's Inkheart raises the issue of an author's moral responsibility for his or her creation.
• Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind confront the moral complexities of war.
• Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is a rewriting of Milton's Paradise Lost by way of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience and "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."

In her study Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children's Literature in America, Beverly Lyon Clark asserts that the study of children's lit raises some fascinating questions about canonicity, commodification, and censorship, but she gives us an even more important reason to take children's lit seriously: "The term kiddie lit captures our culture's ambivalence toward children and children's literature: dismissive? self-mocking? pejorative? ironical?" (2).

Our regard for children's lit has a lot to do with our regard for children, period.