He-Who-Must-Be-Read

In our land of video games, ubiquitous wi-fi, reality tv (see below), and a general saturation of visual stimuli, kids these days have kind of forgotten how to read. Maybe not quite how to read, but why to read (unless good old W is your teacher, a la this gem). There's no time for old-fashioned books if you're busy shooting aliens, being a guitar hero, and trying to keep up with the latest episode of American Idol. Then, along came a run-of-the-mill impoverished single mother. She wrote down her ideas for a story on some cocktail napkins, and fifteen years later, she's worth nearly 800 million dollars. Bloody hell!

I am talking, of course, about J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter universe. It's a little bit difficult to be snarky about Harry Potter, because, well, I love it. It's simple, it's fun, and wizards are really cool! I'm not saying it's brilliant literature or anything (quite the opposite actually - J.K. only knows a handful of adjectives, but luckily the plot can usually make up for the lack of literary genius), but who says you can't be an intelligent human and appreciate a well-crafted fantasy world?

With the exception of the fifth book (hundreds of pages of excruciating teen angst followed by thirty pages of action), all of the volumes make for a quick and enjoyable read. One of the things that makes the Harry Potter books so different from other kids' series is that they were written for a maturing audience. The first book was full of flowers and puppies (murderous flowers and snarling three-headed puppies, but flowers and puppies nonetheless). There was a hint of danger and that whole good versus evil thing, but nothing too scary and/or thought-provoking. By the time we got to the last few books, we were facing some seriously dark stuff, and beloved characters started dropping like bludgered Quidditch players (oops...spoiler alert?). Regardless of the content, the length of the books alone demanded much more from young Muggle readers: even the nerdiest of pre-teens are unlikely to tackle 900 page tomes. So, um, these ones must be awesome!

Anyway, the point of all this is that no matter what you think of the Harry Potter books, there is no denying the impact they had on our culture. Not only did they get kids to read again, they got kids to read hundreds of millions of copies in 67 different languages. And according to Wikipedia, the last four books have set consecutive records for fastest-selling books ever. Ever. Not to mention the movies, merchandise, websites, blogs, even podcasts that have resulted from the Harry Potter explosion. The word "muggle" is actually in the OED. Pretty soon, we'll be referring to him as Sir Harry Potter. That might sound ridiculous, but he's done a lot of Actual good for a fictional character by singlehandedly yanking the youth of the entire world out of an illiterate stupor. Seriously though, if you haven't read them....lame.


Well done, Harry, well done. Mischief Managed.