And none of them appear to have affected book sales so far. Yet Harry Potter is far from alone in the canon of consistently popular children’s literature when it comes to most of these issues. Rowling herself has also generated controversy through her comments about gender and sex in relation to the debate around transgender rights, first on Twitter and later in a 3,700-word essay in 2020. Rowling’s claim in 2007 that she thought of Dumbledore as gay is not even suggested in the books. And it lacks even hints of LGBTQ+ characters. Its racial diversity has been accused of being tokenistic. There is an imbalance between the number of male and female characters in the series, especially teachers. Many readers today may be more aware of the elitism of Hogwarts. However, Harry Potter has come in for criticism in more recent years. The Great Hall in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
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Though it seems likely that more children will continue to watch the films than read the books. And now, a new generation of young parents who grew up with Harry Potter may want their children to have their own Potter experience. It has memorable, appealing characters and the style is undemanding. Harry Potter is both enduringly imaginative – the spells, the magic, the different creatures – and reassuringly familiar – basically, it’s a school story.
#First harry potter book series#
After 24 years, Amazon however still ranks the Philosopher’s Stone at number ten in their list of best-selling children’s books, with the others in the series not far behind.Īll this is not surprising. While the films are frequently televised, and with news that Warner Bros is planning to develop a television series set in the wizarding world, the Harry Potter books no longer top the best-selling children’s book lists. As Rowling herself has said, “When I was a child, if I was enjoying a book, I didn’t want to finish it.” The boy who lived on? Indeed, this may have added to children’s enjoyment and sense of achievement. Neither were enthusiasts put off by the sheer length of the later books. This level of engagement was partly because it was a series, bringing with it a sense of continuity and achievement.
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The most likely number of books in the series to have been read was all seven – the second likeliest, just one.Ī substantial minority of children clearly engaged hugely with the series as readers – and it can only be assumed this benefited their reading more generally. In our own 2014 study of around 600 British primary and secondary school students, around half reported having read at least one of the books, and more of these readers were boys. And while some young purists post-2001 refused to watch the first film until they had read the book, it’s likely the films prompted other children to then go on to read the books. That said, of couse, many children did read them. Indeed, massive book sales led to media declarations of dramatic changes in children’s attitudes to reading.
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Gone, of course, are the heady days when children grew up alongside Harry Potter, queuing outside bookshops the night before the one-minute-past-midnight release of the next volume in the series.īut this enthusiasm gave rise to a very particular phenomenon, with suggestions that the Harry Potter series prompted previously reluctant readers - in particular boys - to read fiction. The first film in the series came four years after the first book (of the same name) in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, which is 25 years old next year. The film follows Harry’s first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as he begins his formal wizarding education. Released in 2001, it became the highest-grossing film of that year and the second-highest-grossing ever at the time (it’s now number 76). Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first film in the eight-part series, has reached its 20th anniversary.