Nope, I'm not going to make comments on the content of the popular books by J.K. Rowling. I haven't read them, and I have seen only two of the movies (which I found mildly entertaining). What I am going to point out is that the Harry Potter phenomenon certainly contradicts a popularly held notion: that children of the MTV and Internet generations don't read books because they have too short an attention span, or they are too shallow to be interested in anything other than teen celebrities.
Baloney. I have witnessed for the whole weekend my 8-year old daughter reading the fifth HP book (which is more than 700 pages long!), and preferring that over TV, by a long shot. Heck, I rarely have the stamina to read anything beyond 300 pages!
It seems to me that the under appreciated message of Harry Potter is that kids can read, do have a reasonable attention span, and can follow a relatively complex story without visual aids. The trick is to write something that they actually care about, that can hold their attention, that calls them back until the story is over, regrettably too soon.
In other words, they need the same sort of stimuli that reasonable adults need also. I don't pick up a book that doesn't captivate my interest or imagination, and if the book isn't good I let it go after a few pages. I don't see why my daughter should behave any differently.
The really good question is: how can we build on the HP example and get out more books that are really enticing to kids, more stories that help their minds grow and expand, that foster their critical thinking, their love of nature, their concern for humanity, or whatever else we would wish them to be into, rather than the latter idiocy by Britney Spears.
Rationally Speaking: an archived blog about science & philosophy, by Massimo Pigliucci
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Harry Potter
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm going to make a confession here. I love comic books, especially those by Marvel Comics.
ReplyDeleteNow, hear me out.
I honestly belive that the reason I read at all now is because I started reading comics when I was a kid.
Now I know, comics provide visual aids, they don't stimulate the imagination like "real" books, yadda yadda yadda...
But the thing I liked about Marvel (and what I like about it today) is that they didn't talk down to me. Marvel's stories had morals, consequenses,they didn't always end pretty. Their heros were flawed and had problems bigger than the villian of the month.
From what I've seen of Harry Potter thus far, it's much the same.
And that's what I think kids need from books today, stories that don't treat them like they're idiots.
One last minor point. Has anyone here ever actually read a Hans Christian Anderson or Brothers Grimm fairy tale? If not, find a collection, read it, watch the Disney version and keep in mind that both were intended for the same audiances. (Verry different Little Mermaid.)
Noah
Massimo, Everything you say is absolutely true. The key to ALL learning is reading, without that skill, nine-tenths of life will passes us by. Our school systems, especially in the early years, must stress this along with math and REAL science.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I took some courses at a local community college and was appalled that many people from high school age on up to 40 years of age could not read and could not write a coherent sentence, not to mention a paragraph.
There were a lot that were competent, but I really felt bad that there were all these others who struggled so hard, yet were unable to take full advantage to the instruction offered simply becasue they were, and I don't think I'm exaggerating, functionally illiterate.
My two girls both devoured Harry Potter books along with Animorphs, The Baby Sitter's Club and a big handful of Richard Scarey. The Animorphs quickly became repetitive and formulaic. Harry Potter has retained some freshness... new ideas, new characters, new language twists, through at least the first 4 which I've read. I'm about to pick up book 5 from my daughter's room since I'm all out of Dawkins and Dennet for the moment. :-)
ReplyDeleteI wonder, though, if reading is somewhat of a "class" thing? My wife and I are college educated and we taught the kids to read before they went to Kindergarten. When my older daughter was 3 she had the vocabulary of an adult and astounded both friends and neighbors. She's smart but I don't think she's that much above average. It was just that we spoke to her with adult vocabulary, with full sentences, with proper grammar and she picked up on it. I'm sure many more kids are capable of this if the parents and schools would just work with them.
Interestingly, there seems to be a tie between being a fantasy or SF fan and being a religious fundamentalist.
ReplyDeleteFantasy maybe, but I would be surpised if the fundamentalist correlation held true with SF readers. I know many freethinkers who have read a great deal of SF.
For me personally, Assimov, Heinlen and Clarke sparked much of my early agnosticism.