[Artemisia] Harry Potter

[Stephanae Baker]

I stumbled across Sorcerer's Stone in the bookstore before the uproar  
myself. I thought it was a decent read and even gave a copy to my  
niece (who asked me after the fury began, "Wow, how did you know?")  
But it hasn't stopped me from being somewhat saddened that it is  
these particular books that have supposedly caused "the revival of  
literacy." I grew up with so many incredible books. And now that the  
Harry Potter movies are out, I have my doubts about the series  
reviving literacy anyway. My children don't enjoy reading the way I  
did at their ages. They were too young for the books before the  
movies started, and now they've seen the movies but haven't bothered  
with the books. I can't figure out why books no longer catch the  
imagination of so many of our children, and if Harry Potter did  
capture their imaginations for a time, I can't argue that that's a  
bad thing, but I also don't think it's lasting. If we can't focus the  
excitement on other books, too, it will all die down in short order.  
I think we've tried, but overall, I don't think we've succeeded.  
Maybe if they'd never made the movies . . .

Belladonna


On Jul 25, 2007, at 11:52 AM, Andrea Waddell wrote:

> I had the distinct advantage of being introduced to the Potter  
> books BEFORE the fury started.  I took a children's lit class in  
> college and the professor said something along the lines of "These  
> are great books, not many people are reading them, but I thought  
> I'd recommend it to you."  That was when there was only ONE book  
> out. :) I can honestly say that if the huge uproar about them was  
> already in full swing when I first heard of them, I probably  
> wouldn't have read them.-Maysun
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