Nicholas Tucker is a lecturer in child psychology and children's literature at the University of Sussex in Southern England. Formerly a teacher and then an educational psychologist, he has written several books for both adults and children. He writes and reviews for a number of national newspapers and is much in demand as a conference speaker.
Nicholas Tucker
The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter
The phenomenal commercial and critical success of the first three Harry Potter stories is without precedent in twentieth-century British children's literature. Enid Blyton, a previous best-selling author, had to serve an apprenticeship papered by rejection slips before finally hitting the jackpot. Roald Dahl had less time to wait, but even so his first children's novel after years of writing for adults, James and the Giant Peach, won only modest success in America and could not initially find a British publisher. Other best-selling writers have made a lot of money quickly, but none has managed in a first novel to prove so instantly acceptable both to critics and to a vast international child and adult readership (the Potter series has already been translated into
more than two dozen languages). In just two years, after being refused by at least two major publishers, J. K. Rowling is now the hottest property in children's literature and a serial prize-winner to boot.
How has she managed it?
Her three stories published so far have a distinctly backward-looking quality. Could it be that modern children relish the chance to return to some of the popular themes and attitudes that used to be found in their fiction? Might the many parents and other adult readers who
also enjoy these books do so because Rowling takes them back to the simplicities of the stories they read when young, at a time when children's books were generally less realistic and more concerned with pleasing fantasies? As it is, contemporary social issues do not exist in Potter books. Harry's fellow-pupils live in a world where drugs, alcohol, divorce, or sexual activity of any kind is simply not a problem.
Difficulties instead arise from more remote, less instantly recognizable sources such as old-fashioned malicious teachers with dangeroussounding names like Severus Snape, scheming young bullies from Children's Literature in Education moneyed backgrounds, and the odd villain pushed on by a terrifying wraith with murderous intent.
The constant sniping at various social and personality stereotypes set up by the author for readers' instant scorn also has an old-fashioned ring to it. Is there really any point, for example, in continuing to mock the type of blinkered suburban existence once, but surely no longer,
thought to be self-evidently summed up by addresses like Number Four, Privet Drive? This is where Harry's detestable uncle, aunt, and cousin live a joyless existence looking out over their obsessively tidy front garden. Their neighbors also are shown leading mean and narrow lives. Harry himself is brought up in a dark cupboard, deprived of any affection. This is not a time or place for any moral ambiguities; Harry hates his environment, and so too will his readers. Melodrama once again stalks the stage, with the author herself cheering on the hero and booing the obvious villains. A popular formula often used in the past is once again pressed into useful service. But perhaps the most determinedly old-fashioned aspect of these stories is the decision to set them in what in many ways is still a traditional gothic-style boarding school. Public school stories set in the deep countryside have had a long run in children's literature, providing escapist dreams to state school pupils and images of a more ideal existence to those with actual knowledge of such places. These stories could only thrive in a social climate which shared the snobbery associated with the perceived desirability of an exclusive schooling set well apart from other children. But within the last two decades, education away from home and friends in a toffee-nosed establishment where free-time activity is closely supervised came to be seen by many, either in books or in real life, not so much as a privilege for children as a form of deprivation. As a consequence, the whole children's boarding school fictional genre has now become a shadow of its former self.
Even so, once popular childhood dreams of social exclusivity die hard, and Rowling triumphantly resurrects this particular fantasy in
her books. She manages this feat because Hogwarts School, complete
with its coat of arms and Latin tag (Drago Dormiens Nunquam,
loosely translated as Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon), is presented not
as yet another snobs' school but as an Academy of Witchcraft and
Wizardry. Harry's first glimpse of Hogwarts, "a vast castle with many
turrets and towers," could have come from any boarding school story
written fifty years ago. Pupils attend it because they have magical
talents or backgrounds, not just because they are wealthy, although
one of Harry's friends, Justin Finch-Fletchley, had originally been put
down for Eton. Yet the sense of an overall elite remains very strong.
222
The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter 223
J. K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 54.
Without appearing overtly snobbish, the Potter books still celebrate
the notion of a different and exclusive form of education for a privileged
few.
Only a humorless ideologue would condemn the books specifically on
this count, since Hogwarts is not offered as a social model for all
fortunate children. It is instead an impossible school existing within
an imaginary universe serving a unique group of pupils. Even so,
these stories hark back affectionately to a time when a boarding
school was seen as unquestionably the best place for children to be,
however puzzling to the rest of the world. The scene where Harry
goes to be kitted out for his new school, with the aged shopkeeper
remembering Harry's father going through the same process, is familiar
from many older rites of passage school stories. But Harry fares
even better than the most highborn of young toffs: "Bless my soul,"
whispered the old barman, "Harry Potter . . . what an honour!" The
journey to Hogwarts by steam train, allowing Harry a first encounter
with other new and older pupils, is reminiscent of a similar scene in
F. H. Anstey's classic school story, Vice Versa. Once there, the gamekeeper
Hagrid is the image of those humble but loyal fictional nonacademic
appointments like ex-sportsmen turned groundsmen, barred
from the teachers' common room but often confidants to school story
heroes, especially when like Harry they are in a tight corner. In fact,
Hagrid loves Harry like a son, both for the sake of Harry's parents
whom he knew and out of sympathy for his years of neglect.
Harry's most powerful friend, however, is no less than the headmaster
of Hogwarts himself, Professor Albus Dumbledore. The greatest wizard
of modern times, this kindly figure knows everything and understands
everybody. In this he fulfills the role of idealized authority figure
familiar in public school fiction ever since the depiction of Dr.
Arnold in Tom Brown's Schooldays. A grandfather rather than a father
figure, with his half-moon glasses, flowing silver hair, beard and moustache,
he also has the air of an omniscient divinity about him. Inscrutable
in his ultimate aim, he is always there in moments of greatest
crisis, providing Harry and his readers with another reassuring and
attractive fantasy figure.
Within the classroom, links with former school stories are harder to
come by. This is another shrewd move on the part of the author, since
traditional Greek and Latin lessons, now so utterly foreign to modern
children's experience, are eschewed in favor of lessons in Defence
Against the Dark Arts, Herbology (the study of magical plants), and
Charms and Potions. School stories from Thomas Hughes to Anthony
Buckeridge normally passed over close description of lessons, save
when a joke or example of skulduggery needed a convenient class224
Children's Literature in Education
J. K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 92.
J. K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 93.
room link. It was otherwise assumed that young readers already had
enough of their own enforced periods of learning to want to go
through anything similar in their favorite stories. But at Hogwarts,
lessons provide some of the best and most appealing fantasies of an
existence so very much more interesting than ordinary, humdrum
school life as it is normally experienced.
There are other ways in which Rowling improves upon the model of
the traditional boarding school story while drawing on it at the same
time. Visits to the local village and to any wider community of children
are still limited, but within the school boys and girls now mix
together as equals. They share common rooms, although not dormitories.
Best of all, and what makes Hogwarts different from any other
school, is the way that nothing can ever be taken for granted. Pictures
talk, ghosts and poltergeists are around, keys fly, doors disappear into
walls, monsters invade the girls' lavatories, books hide themselves,
and secret passages beckon.
Food, outside midnight feasts one of the traditional banes of fictional
boarding school life, is also uniformly excellent. At Harry's first meal
at Hogwarts, "He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on
one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages,
bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, chips, Yorkshire
pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup and, for some strange reason,
mint humbugs." This is later followed by the type of tea that Billy
Bunter would once have slavered over: "Blocks of ice-cream in every
flavour you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate eclairs
and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, jelly, rice pudding."
Lavish descriptions of food were once thought of as an important part
of the appeal of children's fiction, with the various feasts described by
authors like Richmal Crompton and Enid Blyton becoming even more
meaningful to young readers during times of general austerity. It is
less clear how popular such descriptions are with children today, at a
time when there is plenty of attractive food around and fewer adultimposed
restrictions on what children are allowed to eat. Could the
vast meals consumed at Hogwarts be one of those details that appeal
more to adults, remembering tougher times at the home or school
table? When the Hogwarts children buy sweets, it is their magical
qualities that are stressed, not their delicious tastes. By returning to a
more traditional mode of writing for children, Rowling once again has
provided fantasies that many older adults are able to share in as well.
Nearly all Harry's teachers are fair but strict, which means that his
various transgressions stand a good chance of getting him into real
trouble. This is in contrast to the disciplinary measures imposed by
The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter
the less formal, more amiable teachers found in today's schools and
school stories, and serves to heighten the tension. The way individual
teachers at Hogwarts regularly subtract House Points from pupils as a
punishment is another example of almost dead school practices
brought back to fictional life. Arbitrary punishments like these, administered
by teachers addressing pupils curtly by their surnames, distance
child characters and their readers from the feelings of guilt that
arise when teachers react more personally to their various transgressions.
One of the attractions of the traditional boarding school story
was the way in which it described the exploits of lively, mischievous
children while also ignoring any of the emotional problems occurring
on both sides when children living at home get into trouble with their
parents. Disobeying a teacher, knowing that the result is a fixed punishment
rather than a guilt-inducing interview, offers a potentially less
painful prospect for readers, both in fiction and in real life.
Harry's teachers also show a decidedly old-fashioned devotion to the
School House to which they and their pupils are affiliated. Winning
the House Cup at the end of the academic year is made all the more
fulfilling because teachers cheer as well as pupils. The same teacher
involvement is found in the various closely fought games of quidditch:
a spectacular contest played on flying broomsticks. Hogwarts pays
almost as much attention to success at quidditch as Tom Brown's
Schooldays does to winning on the rugger field. Harry turns out to be
a natural star at this game, and duly comes in for extensive praise
from pupils and teachers on numerous occasions.
Before getting to Hogwarts, Harry had disliked his primary school
because he was constantly bullied by his cousin Dudley and his gang.
Although he feels it will be nice to get away from them when he goes
to his local comprehensive and they go to their private schools, there
is no enthusiasm as such for the state schools Harry has attended so
far and also plans to attend in the future. Hogwarts, with all its advantages,
provides him with a dream solution. Young readers, faced by
the same comparative lack of glamor in their own day schools, will
almost certainly side with Harry on this. They will be responding to a
very beguiling fantasy. It is of course also possible to make the mundane
seem dramatic and exciting, but this usually means harder work
all around for both reader and writer, and is not a course Rowling
from the first pages of her books shows any interest in following.
Accompanying this return to traditional school story narrative is a
moral framework that is also a throwback to older, more easily judgmental
times. In these stories, to look bad is to be bad. Harry's uncle
has "hardly any neck," but his wife has "twice the usual amount . . .
which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning
225
225 Children's Literature in Education
J. K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's
Stone, p. 8.
J. K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and the Chamber
of Secrets, p. 7
Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 22
over garden fences, spying on neighbours." Their son Dudley is a
spoiled, petulant mini-tyrant. He is "so large his bottom drooped over
either side of the kitchen chair," and he is given to complain loudly
about the long walk between the fridge and the television in the living
room. He also has "piggy little eyes" plus five chins that wobble as
he eats. His particular gang "were all big and stupid," though one of
them, Piers Polkiss, is more scrawny, "with a face like a rat." They are,
in short, the sort of unpleasant characters that Roald Dahl would have
flushed away into oblivion along with his own dislikable creations
Augustus Gloop and Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory,
Other children's books have come some way since this famous story
was published over thirty years ago, particularly in terms of trying
harder to understand exactly why the bully, sneak, or glutton becomes
what he or she is. In America now there is a National Association to
Advance Fat Awareness; anyone who thinks this is a self-evidently absurd
organization might like to imagine what it is like to be a fat child
when certain children's authors, as well as other pupils, still sometimes
seem intent on making life extra difficult for you. There is not much of
this new thinking in the Potter stories; Dudley and his two repellent
parents are wheeled out for readers' scorn and hatred, very much as
Roald Dahl—again—does with the loathsome parents in Matilda.
These are condemned not just for looking bad and behaving worse, but
also for social habits such as watching television while consuming "TV
dinners." Dudley, in his turn, tries to pack his television, video, and
computer into his sports bag before setting out on a brief family holiday.
While Mr. and Mrs. Dursely undoubtedly adore their oversize son, this
love is always mocked by the author. When addressing 10-year-old
Dudley, they use ridiculous epithets like Dinky Duddydums or Ickle
Dudleykins. Harry's love for his dead parents, and theirs for him, is
treated very differently. This is hardly fair, but these are not stories
eager to embrace some of the difficulties inherent in making judgments
about what is good or bad. There are, however, occasional
suggestions of more complexity: Severus Snape, the unpleasant Potions
Master, is regularly made to appear more malign than he really
is. But Harry learns nothing from his mistakes about this teacher. Such
errors become clear when each story is nearing its end, but any process
of rethinking is forgotten. The first two stories prefer to concentrate
on the details of a final Hogwarts feast, accompanied by admiring
looks and full-throated applause for Harry from fellow pupils and
occasionally from teaching staff too.
Harry himself comes from the same stable that produced Cinderella
and subsequent stories featuring badly treated orphans or stepThe
Rise and Rise of Harry Potter
children born to great things. Their initial suffering is amply compensated
for when they finally come into their own, duly exulting over
those who had previously scorned them. The telltale scar on Harry's
forehead—a legacy of his infant encounter with the evil Lord Voldemort—
is as big a giveaway as any significant birthmark or cache of
letters eventually testifying to a downtrodden orphan character's true
nobility. Once safely at Hogwarts, he is treated as a hero before he has
done anything heroic: a gratifyingly effortless example of virtue rewarded
at no initial cost. Harry of course goes on to justify his reputation
with acts of daring and courage. But readers know he is safer
than he sometimes supposes. With seven planned books in this series,
there is no way Harry is going to disappear halfway through.
He is, in short, an easy hero for readers of all ages to identify with. In
looks, he is no film star, although in successive book jackets by different
artists his initial, nerdy, train-spotter face has been transformed
into something more flattering. As an orphan, he only knows his parents
as figures so ideal they actually laid down their lives to save his.
Such parents can be loved without the sort of qualification inevitably
brought about by day-to-day reality. They also give Harry extra justification
for hating his uncle and aunt, so extra nasty by comparison.
No room for guilt here, for even though they did bring him up, it was
in such a mean, neglectful way that gratitude is never an issue.
Harry's relationship with his own destiny means that the main events
in his life often happen because they have to, rather than through his
individual choice. This romantic difference from others is reinforced
in two other ways. Like all pupils at Hogwarts, he is separated from
the rest of the human race, or "muggles" for short, because he is a
wizard. This in itself represents a most agreeable fantasy: many other
children's books have capitalized on the way young readers like to
share the imaginary experience of feeling exclusively different from
others. Enid Blyton's Secret Seven gang and Arthur Ransome's young
seafaring adventurers, who so enjoy the contrast between themselves
and all the other "natives" on the shore, are just two of many possible
examples. But Harry is also separated from other wizards because of
his birthright. Young readers, accustomed to their own essential ordinariness,
are thereby offered a heady mixture when it comes to identifying
with Harry. Personal fantasies do not come much more appealing
than this, especially when they are embodied in someone who up
to the age of 10 was treated as of no account at all.
Those heroes who always win at games, beat up bullies, and later go
on to explore remote territories while forever setting a good example
can be rather dismaying to young readers all too aware of their own
deficiencies by comparison. As Graham Greene once wrote about
227
228 Children's Literature in Education
Graham Greene, The
Lost Childhood and
Other Essays, p. 15
Rider Haggard's characters, Quatermain and Curtis, "They were men
of such unyielding integrity (they would only admit to a fault in order
to show how it might be overcome) that the wavering personality of
a child could not rest for long against those monumental shoulders. A
child, after a l l . . . is quite well aware of cowardice, shame, deception,
disappointment. Sir Henry Curtis perched upon a rock bleeding from
a dozen wounds but fighting on with the remnants of the Greys
against the hordes of Twala was too heroic. These men were like
Platonic ideas: they were not life and one had already begun to know
it."
Harry and his friends avoid such painful comparisons since they
mostly excel in magical areas where readers cannot feel in competition.
Magic is the most effective compensatory fantasy ever invented
by humans, precisely because in real life we cannot do all those things
we most wish for. The next best thing, however, is to create imaginary
magical powers for ourselves, either through our own fantasies
or via those of someone else. The success of the Potter series shows
that the central need of humans, especially when they are young, to
transcend reality in the imagination has not diminished since the early
days of folktales and fairy stories. Flying like a bird, turning invisible,
eating from a plate that always refills itself are age-old imaginative
motifs also found in the Potter books along with many others.
I would suggest therefore that the popularity of the series so far owes
a great deal to the way that the author has breathed new life into
traditional forms of writing for children. A Cinderella plot set in a
novel type of boarding school peopled by jolly pupils already has a lot
going for it. Add in some easy stereotypes illustrating meanness, gluttony,
envy, or black-hearted evil to raise the tension, round off with a
sound, unchallenging moral statement about the value of courage,
friendship, and the power of love, and there already are some of the
important ingredients necessary for a match-winning formula. Written
up in good, workman-like prose with no frills attached and with an
excellent feeling for plot-driven, often highly suspenseful narrative,
and here are stories to satisfy both 9-year-olds and many older
readers—adults included—also in search of a return to melodrama,
moral certainty, and agreeable wish-fulfillment.
The Potter stories to date could therefore be described as good rather
than great literature. They whisk readers along without hinting at any
particular depth of argument or description. They entertain richly,
but rarely provoke, question, or inform. Characters are on the whole
two-dimensional, picked out by particular physical features plus one
overriding personality trait, such as adventurousness, scholarship, or
general timidity. Gender roles are stereotyped, with boys out for acThe
Rise and Rise of Harry Potter 229
Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 99
Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 199
tion and the one salient girl character forever urging caution. Harry
himself is pleasant enough but hardly a well-rounded personality. His
adventures so far are largely external to himself; there are few moments
of inner exploration or any serious reorganization of values,
priorities, or relationships. Elsewhere, centaurs, unicorns, and phoenixes
abound along with a Cerberus-type three-headed dog and an
equally mythological snake who, like Medusa, can kill with a single
glance. But unlike the classical creatures in C. S. Lewis's Narnia stories,
they exist here as walk-on parts, rather than as members of their
own separate universe following its own rules.
Rowling is closer to Lewis, however, in her robust attitude toward
dealing with Harry's enemies. Filch, the malicious school caretaker,
possesses an equally unpleasant cat named Mrs. Norris. For the pupils,
"it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs. Norris a good kick."
Later in the same story, Ron Weasley pleads with Harry, "Oh, let's kick
her, just this once," but is refused. Is this casual endorsement of
thoughtless cruelty to animals a throwback to the prewar days of
Richmal Crompton's William stories, where his dislike of certain cats
occasionally extended into outright killing? It would be foolish to labor
this point: Mrs. Norris, after all, is no ordinary cat just as Hogwarts
is not an ordinary school. The point remains, however; evil in
the Potter books, whether in human or animal form, is there to be
punished rather than understood or—perish the thought—even occasionally
forgiven. If that means conveying a basically intolerant, judgmental
attitude to readers, young as well as older, so be it.
Does it matter that these books describe a world of simple heroics
and moral absolutes? This depends entirely on a critic's expectations
of children's literature. For some, the best children's books contain
the finest writing, most sophisticated characterization, and an ability
to help children grow in understanding. For others, the best children's
literature is that which most successfully understands and caters
to a child's state of imaginative immaturity. On this latter reckoning,
the Potter stories come through with flying colors, since they
undeniably provide young readers with flattering, highly acceptable
fantasies of heroism, exclusivity, melodrama, and wish fulfillment. For
sterner critics, these same fantasies are basically facile, representing a
talking down to the very children whose lives we should be taking
more seriously for what they really are.
Both points of view could be argued. But writing off the Potter series
as little more than an inspired return to a regressive story-telling mode
linked to an equally old-fashioned black-and-white moral universe
would be doing the author an injustice. For one thing, the series is
not over; four more titles remain. Each story shows Harry one year
Children's Literature in Education
older than the last, which means that our hero, far from existing in a
timeless vacuum of endlessly repeated birthdays and Christmases, will
actually be 18 when his schooldays and story finish. By this time,
Harry and his author will have to face up to the existence of adolescent
questioning and uncertainty, whether in the field of morality,
sexuality, friendship, or indeed over the problem of defining what
exactly twentieth-century heroism truly consists of. While the stories
so far have been set in traditional mode, those to come will have to
make more acknowledgment of modern psychological realties if
Harry and his friends are going to look, sound, and behave like convincing
turn-of-the-century teenagers.
Harry began his stories at age 10; it could be argued that the early
books deliberately tie themselves to the more limited vision and expectations
of a small child, and that this situation will change as Harry
himself gets older. To criticize them for moral simplicity without
knowing the whole picture would therefore be unfair. The author
could easily have produced more Potter stories where Harry and his
friends stay basically the same age in the manner of previous successful
series by Enid Blyton and others. The decision to make him grow
older with every book, and coping with the problems that will arise
while still trying to satisfy younger readers, suggests a serious and
committed novelist who deserves respect and, so far, the benefit of
any doubt.
In fact, there are already some signs of greater depth and levels of
understanding in these earlier stories. Harry, for example, has to
school himself not to gaze forever into the magical Mirror of Erised,
within which he can see his dead parents smiling and waving at him.
As his headmaster explains, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and
Harry Potter and the forget to live." While the mirror "shows us nothing more or less than
Philosopher's stone, the deepest desire of our hearts," it is never certain that it is telling
p.157 the real truth. "Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what
they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is
real or even possible." This is the most moving and thoughtful scene
in the Potter books so far; there could be others to come.
Where Rowling has already excelled beyond argument is in her extraordinary
powers of invention. There have been many ingeniously
inventive children's authors before, but seldom one with an imagination
so endlessly fertile. The specialized vocabulary she invents is entirely
convincing: "Floo Powder" (magic substance that transports you
through chimneys); "Howler" (an exploding letter of complaint); "Parselmouth"
(someone who can talk to snakes). When it comes to
names, vicious Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia may be old hat, but are
well compensated for by immediately exciting and evocative names
230
The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter 231
Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 98
Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets,
p. 172
Harry Potter and the
Prisoner ofAzkaban,
p. 15
Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone, p.
212.
like Lucius Malfoy, Miranda Goshawk, Adelbert Waffling, and Bathilda
Bagshot.
The author is also expert in thinking up new ways of turning everyday
reality on its head. This happens so often in her books it almost
becomes a matter of course, though nonetheless impressive and entertaining
for all that. Here, for example, is Harry faced by the normally
rather dull subject of staircases:
"There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide,
sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different
on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had
to remember to jump."
And here in the next volume is Ron Weasley on the topic of dangerous
books:
"There was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who read
Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives.
And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop
reading! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to
do everything one-handed."
The third story contains a typically spirited inventory of a Broomstick
Servicing Kit: "A large jar of Fleetwood's High-Finish Handle Polish, a
pair of gleaming silver Tail-Twig Clippers, a tiny brass compass to clip
onto your broom for long journeys, and a Handbook of Do-it-Yourself
Broomcare."
In these and other ways, the author successfully incorporates the
fizz and excitement of the modern video game into the prose page.
Hogwarts itself is an example of virtual reality, existing alongside the
normal world but only familiar to those in the know. The suspension
of time, and the way that Harry and his friends can chart everyone's
current movements on their special Marauder's Map are both familiar
devices from video games. Pages of description in a Potter book
can be as active as any of those screen games where clicking on to a
particular feature reveals some unexpected, hidden secret within.
The game of quidditch could come straight from any video arcade,
with scores rattling up on the side as broomstick riders swoop in
search of the elusive Golden Snitch, avoiding the assaults of aggressive
Bludgers on the way. Harry's encounters with absolute evil
("The most terrible face Harry had ever seen. It was chalk white
with glaring red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake") are already
familiar to most children from dungeons and dragons-type computer
games.
Children's Literature in Education
This ability to rival the energy of the video games on the printed page
while adding in a consistently brilliant line of jokey inventiveness is
surely Rowling's most innovatory literary gift, and one which marks
her out for critical as well as popular acclaim. Her prose style is not
always impressive—pupils "chortle" as they once did in Billy Bunter
stories, eyes are clapped on, chins are weak, and blushes extend to
the roots of the hair. Other lazy school story cliches sometimes crop
up, including formal handshakes and curt compliments like "Good
man!" Yet the pace of her writing, the abundance of magical detail,
and the consistency of invention and energy are all the author's own.
The great popularity of her series to date is particularly interesting.
The days have long past, if indeed they ever existed, when favorable
press notices significantly helped a book's popularity with children.
Appearing on the Carnegie and Guardian Book Award short list certainly
helped Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, with already
good sales climbing sharply as a result of the publicity after it won the
Smarties Award in November 1997. But fundamentally it is children
and their parents who turned the Potter series into a best-seller. This
happens every now and again when authors are taken up in a big
way, with news of their books spreading throughout playgrounds and
drawing rooms the length of Britain. Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, and
Judy Blume have all had this treatment. Other series also come to
mind: Goosebumps, Sweet Valley High, My Little Pony. All of these
have had a time of immense popularity, although almost entirely with
children, before beginning to fade away.
The way that Rowling's books have been seized on by the young as
well as older readers reminds us that there is still—in a television
age—a significant link between society and literature, and sometimes
very good literature at that. The existence of the special vocabulary of
the Potter books known only to those who read the books could have
helped children spot other fans and thus helped spread the word. The
increasing input of publicity merchants, such as putting the third eagerly
awaited Potter book in a chained cage on display in a bookshop
window until the day of sale, certainly ensured frequent newspaper
coverage for the book and the author all over Britain.
Rowling's success, however, was never merely the result of good publicity.
It also had nothing to do with government initiatives like the
literacy hour or the specially designated Year of Reading. To an extent,
her triumph is all her own, confounding certain contemporary
cliches about children's supposed reading taste on the way. The Potter
books, for example, run from 223 to 317 pages, at a time when we
are assured that the young have decreasing time for reading and a
poorer concentration span than before. The books feature a boy as
232
The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter
the main character, although it is known that the majority of young
readers are female. While there is an important girl character, the
Potter books to date are ultimately very much boys' stories, their emphasis
far more on action than feeling.
Even so, they proved to be the right titles at the right time. Where
children lead, literary critics do not always want to follow. Roald Dahl
was one such flawed genius, delighting the young while sometimes
upsetting reviewers and librarians. It is too early to say whether Rowling
possesses anything like the same mixture of literary populism
linked to an extraordinary ability to get through to children. What is
certain is that she has done more than anyone else in the last two
years to spread the idea that it is books themselves that can be truly
exciting rather than an amorphous concept like "reading." The fact
that she now attracts an adult audience as well is equally impressive.
To succeed as she has done with books that in many ways remain a
critical success is an astonishing achievement in a new writer. While
Harry Potter excels through an accident of birth, Rowling has made it
by hard, professional work.
It is always cheering for children's literature critics when young
readers show that they can still become totally hooked on fiction.
Descriptions of children utterly absorbed in a Potter book are very
heartening at a time when the joys of reading are so often challenged
by other juvenile habits and activities. It is also good for the morale of
all "books people" when others get interested in their particular
topic. Seeing the Potter stories at the top of various newspaper bestseller
lists means that there are now more adults taking an interest in
what their children read even to the extent of enjoying some of the
same books for themselves. As it is, adult editions of all the first three
Potter books also exist, bearing a different book jacket that does not
immediately denote "children's book" to casual onlookers. If all this
results in more shared enthusiasm and family time for reading in general,
who could possibly complain?
On the other hand, are the Potter stories, with their old-fashioned
plots, settings, and characterization, necessarily ideal titles to reintroduce
parents and other adults to what is best in contemporary
children's literature? For me, it would be sad if these books came to
stand in the popular imagination for "children's books," in the way,
say, that Enid Blyton's stories did for so long among all but the relatively
well informed. Whatever their accomplishments, the Potter
books to date do seem in many ways to be looking back. Other contemporary
writers who are pushing forward with something very different
are equally deserving of such a huge take-up. If Rowling's success
marks a new beginning for all children's literature so far as adult
233
Children's Literature in Education
attention is concerned, well and good. If the result is fame for her but
continuing adult indifference to the best of her many competitors,
then an opportunity will have been lost.
References
Anstey, E, Vice Versa (1882) numerous editions.
Greene, Graham, The Lost Childhood and Other Essays. London: Eyre and
Spottiswoode, 1951.
Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. London: Bloomsbury,
1997.
Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. London: Bloomsbury,
1998.
Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. London: Bloomsbury,
1999.
234
Nicholas Tucker
The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter
The phenomenal commercial and critical success of the first three Harry Potter stories is without precedent in twentieth-century British children's literature. Enid Blyton, a previous best-selling author, had to serve an apprenticeship papered by rejection slips before finally hitting the jackpot. Roald Dahl had less time to wait, but even so his first children's novel after years of writing for adults, James and the Giant Peach, won only modest success in America and could not initially find a British publisher. Other best-selling writers have made a lot of money quickly, but none has managed in a first novel to prove so instantly acceptable both to critics and to a vast international child and adult readership (the Potter series has already been translated into
more than two dozen languages). In just two years, after being refused by at least two major publishers, J. K. Rowling is now the hottest property in children's literature and a serial prize-winner to boot.
How has she managed it?
Her three stories published so far have a distinctly backward-looking quality. Could it be that modern children relish the chance to return to some of the popular themes and attitudes that used to be found in their fiction? Might the many parents and other adult readers who
also enjoy these books do so because Rowling takes them back to the simplicities of the stories they read when young, at a time when children's books were generally less realistic and more concerned with pleasing fantasies? As it is, contemporary social issues do not exist in Potter books. Harry's fellow-pupils live in a world where drugs, alcohol, divorce, or sexual activity of any kind is simply not a problem.
Difficulties instead arise from more remote, less instantly recognizable sources such as old-fashioned malicious teachers with dangeroussounding names like Severus Snape, scheming young bullies from Children's Literature in Education moneyed backgrounds, and the odd villain pushed on by a terrifying wraith with murderous intent.
The constant sniping at various social and personality stereotypes set up by the author for readers' instant scorn also has an old-fashioned ring to it. Is there really any point, for example, in continuing to mock the type of blinkered suburban existence once, but surely no longer,
thought to be self-evidently summed up by addresses like Number Four, Privet Drive? This is where Harry's detestable uncle, aunt, and cousin live a joyless existence looking out over their obsessively tidy front garden. Their neighbors also are shown leading mean and narrow lives. Harry himself is brought up in a dark cupboard, deprived of any affection. This is not a time or place for any moral ambiguities; Harry hates his environment, and so too will his readers. Melodrama once again stalks the stage, with the author herself cheering on the hero and booing the obvious villains. A popular formula often used in the past is once again pressed into useful service. But perhaps the most determinedly old-fashioned aspect of these stories is the decision to set them in what in many ways is still a traditional gothic-style boarding school. Public school stories set in the deep countryside have had a long run in children's literature, providing escapist dreams to state school pupils and images of a more ideal existence to those with actual knowledge of such places. These stories could only thrive in a social climate which shared the snobbery associated with the perceived desirability of an exclusive schooling set well apart from other children. But within the last two decades, education away from home and friends in a toffee-nosed establishment where free-time activity is closely supervised came to be seen by many, either in books or in real life, not so much as a privilege for children as a form of deprivation. As a consequence, the whole children's boarding school fictional genre has now become a shadow of its former self.
Even so, once popular childhood dreams of social exclusivity die hard, and Rowling triumphantly resurrects this particular fantasy in
her books. She manages this feat because Hogwarts School, complete
with its coat of arms and Latin tag (Drago Dormiens Nunquam,
loosely translated as Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon), is presented not
as yet another snobs' school but as an Academy of Witchcraft and
Wizardry. Harry's first glimpse of Hogwarts, "a vast castle with many
turrets and towers," could have come from any boarding school story
written fifty years ago. Pupils attend it because they have magical
talents or backgrounds, not just because they are wealthy, although
one of Harry's friends, Justin Finch-Fletchley, had originally been put
down for Eton. Yet the sense of an overall elite remains very strong.
222
The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter 223
J. K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 54.
Without appearing overtly snobbish, the Potter books still celebrate
the notion of a different and exclusive form of education for a privileged
few.
Only a humorless ideologue would condemn the books specifically on
this count, since Hogwarts is not offered as a social model for all
fortunate children. It is instead an impossible school existing within
an imaginary universe serving a unique group of pupils. Even so,
these stories hark back affectionately to a time when a boarding
school was seen as unquestionably the best place for children to be,
however puzzling to the rest of the world. The scene where Harry
goes to be kitted out for his new school, with the aged shopkeeper
remembering Harry's father going through the same process, is familiar
from many older rites of passage school stories. But Harry fares
even better than the most highborn of young toffs: "Bless my soul,"
whispered the old barman, "Harry Potter . . . what an honour!" The
journey to Hogwarts by steam train, allowing Harry a first encounter
with other new and older pupils, is reminiscent of a similar scene in
F. H. Anstey's classic school story, Vice Versa. Once there, the gamekeeper
Hagrid is the image of those humble but loyal fictional nonacademic
appointments like ex-sportsmen turned groundsmen, barred
from the teachers' common room but often confidants to school story
heroes, especially when like Harry they are in a tight corner. In fact,
Hagrid loves Harry like a son, both for the sake of Harry's parents
whom he knew and out of sympathy for his years of neglect.
Harry's most powerful friend, however, is no less than the headmaster
of Hogwarts himself, Professor Albus Dumbledore. The greatest wizard
of modern times, this kindly figure knows everything and understands
everybody. In this he fulfills the role of idealized authority figure
familiar in public school fiction ever since the depiction of Dr.
Arnold in Tom Brown's Schooldays. A grandfather rather than a father
figure, with his half-moon glasses, flowing silver hair, beard and moustache,
he also has the air of an omniscient divinity about him. Inscrutable
in his ultimate aim, he is always there in moments of greatest
crisis, providing Harry and his readers with another reassuring and
attractive fantasy figure.
Within the classroom, links with former school stories are harder to
come by. This is another shrewd move on the part of the author, since
traditional Greek and Latin lessons, now so utterly foreign to modern
children's experience, are eschewed in favor of lessons in Defence
Against the Dark Arts, Herbology (the study of magical plants), and
Charms and Potions. School stories from Thomas Hughes to Anthony
Buckeridge normally passed over close description of lessons, save
when a joke or example of skulduggery needed a convenient class224
Children's Literature in Education
J. K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 92.
J. K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 93.
room link. It was otherwise assumed that young readers already had
enough of their own enforced periods of learning to want to go
through anything similar in their favorite stories. But at Hogwarts,
lessons provide some of the best and most appealing fantasies of an
existence so very much more interesting than ordinary, humdrum
school life as it is normally experienced.
There are other ways in which Rowling improves upon the model of
the traditional boarding school story while drawing on it at the same
time. Visits to the local village and to any wider community of children
are still limited, but within the school boys and girls now mix
together as equals. They share common rooms, although not dormitories.
Best of all, and what makes Hogwarts different from any other
school, is the way that nothing can ever be taken for granted. Pictures
talk, ghosts and poltergeists are around, keys fly, doors disappear into
walls, monsters invade the girls' lavatories, books hide themselves,
and secret passages beckon.
Food, outside midnight feasts one of the traditional banes of fictional
boarding school life, is also uniformly excellent. At Harry's first meal
at Hogwarts, "He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on
one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages,
bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, chips, Yorkshire
pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup and, for some strange reason,
mint humbugs." This is later followed by the type of tea that Billy
Bunter would once have slavered over: "Blocks of ice-cream in every
flavour you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate eclairs
and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, jelly, rice pudding."
Lavish descriptions of food were once thought of as an important part
of the appeal of children's fiction, with the various feasts described by
authors like Richmal Crompton and Enid Blyton becoming even more
meaningful to young readers during times of general austerity. It is
less clear how popular such descriptions are with children today, at a
time when there is plenty of attractive food around and fewer adultimposed
restrictions on what children are allowed to eat. Could the
vast meals consumed at Hogwarts be one of those details that appeal
more to adults, remembering tougher times at the home or school
table? When the Hogwarts children buy sweets, it is their magical
qualities that are stressed, not their delicious tastes. By returning to a
more traditional mode of writing for children, Rowling once again has
provided fantasies that many older adults are able to share in as well.
Nearly all Harry's teachers are fair but strict, which means that his
various transgressions stand a good chance of getting him into real
trouble. This is in contrast to the disciplinary measures imposed by
The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter
the less formal, more amiable teachers found in today's schools and
school stories, and serves to heighten the tension. The way individual
teachers at Hogwarts regularly subtract House Points from pupils as a
punishment is another example of almost dead school practices
brought back to fictional life. Arbitrary punishments like these, administered
by teachers addressing pupils curtly by their surnames, distance
child characters and their readers from the feelings of guilt that
arise when teachers react more personally to their various transgressions.
One of the attractions of the traditional boarding school story
was the way in which it described the exploits of lively, mischievous
children while also ignoring any of the emotional problems occurring
on both sides when children living at home get into trouble with their
parents. Disobeying a teacher, knowing that the result is a fixed punishment
rather than a guilt-inducing interview, offers a potentially less
painful prospect for readers, both in fiction and in real life.
Harry's teachers also show a decidedly old-fashioned devotion to the
School House to which they and their pupils are affiliated. Winning
the House Cup at the end of the academic year is made all the more
fulfilling because teachers cheer as well as pupils. The same teacher
involvement is found in the various closely fought games of quidditch:
a spectacular contest played on flying broomsticks. Hogwarts pays
almost as much attention to success at quidditch as Tom Brown's
Schooldays does to winning on the rugger field. Harry turns out to be
a natural star at this game, and duly comes in for extensive praise
from pupils and teachers on numerous occasions.
Before getting to Hogwarts, Harry had disliked his primary school
because he was constantly bullied by his cousin Dudley and his gang.
Although he feels it will be nice to get away from them when he goes
to his local comprehensive and they go to their private schools, there
is no enthusiasm as such for the state schools Harry has attended so
far and also plans to attend in the future. Hogwarts, with all its advantages,
provides him with a dream solution. Young readers, faced by
the same comparative lack of glamor in their own day schools, will
almost certainly side with Harry on this. They will be responding to a
very beguiling fantasy. It is of course also possible to make the mundane
seem dramatic and exciting, but this usually means harder work
all around for both reader and writer, and is not a course Rowling
from the first pages of her books shows any interest in following.
Accompanying this return to traditional school story narrative is a
moral framework that is also a throwback to older, more easily judgmental
times. In these stories, to look bad is to be bad. Harry's uncle
has "hardly any neck," but his wife has "twice the usual amount . . .
which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning
225
225 Children's Literature in Education
J. K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's
Stone, p. 8.
J. K. Rowling, Harry
Potter and the Chamber
of Secrets, p. 7
Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 22
over garden fences, spying on neighbours." Their son Dudley is a
spoiled, petulant mini-tyrant. He is "so large his bottom drooped over
either side of the kitchen chair," and he is given to complain loudly
about the long walk between the fridge and the television in the living
room. He also has "piggy little eyes" plus five chins that wobble as
he eats. His particular gang "were all big and stupid," though one of
them, Piers Polkiss, is more scrawny, "with a face like a rat." They are,
in short, the sort of unpleasant characters that Roald Dahl would have
flushed away into oblivion along with his own dislikable creations
Augustus Gloop and Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory,
Other children's books have come some way since this famous story
was published over thirty years ago, particularly in terms of trying
harder to understand exactly why the bully, sneak, or glutton becomes
what he or she is. In America now there is a National Association to
Advance Fat Awareness; anyone who thinks this is a self-evidently absurd
organization might like to imagine what it is like to be a fat child
when certain children's authors, as well as other pupils, still sometimes
seem intent on making life extra difficult for you. There is not much of
this new thinking in the Potter stories; Dudley and his two repellent
parents are wheeled out for readers' scorn and hatred, very much as
Roald Dahl—again—does with the loathsome parents in Matilda.
These are condemned not just for looking bad and behaving worse, but
also for social habits such as watching television while consuming "TV
dinners." Dudley, in his turn, tries to pack his television, video, and
computer into his sports bag before setting out on a brief family holiday.
While Mr. and Mrs. Dursely undoubtedly adore their oversize son, this
love is always mocked by the author. When addressing 10-year-old
Dudley, they use ridiculous epithets like Dinky Duddydums or Ickle
Dudleykins. Harry's love for his dead parents, and theirs for him, is
treated very differently. This is hardly fair, but these are not stories
eager to embrace some of the difficulties inherent in making judgments
about what is good or bad. There are, however, occasional
suggestions of more complexity: Severus Snape, the unpleasant Potions
Master, is regularly made to appear more malign than he really
is. But Harry learns nothing from his mistakes about this teacher. Such
errors become clear when each story is nearing its end, but any process
of rethinking is forgotten. The first two stories prefer to concentrate
on the details of a final Hogwarts feast, accompanied by admiring
looks and full-throated applause for Harry from fellow pupils and
occasionally from teaching staff too.
Harry himself comes from the same stable that produced Cinderella
and subsequent stories featuring badly treated orphans or stepThe
Rise and Rise of Harry Potter
children born to great things. Their initial suffering is amply compensated
for when they finally come into their own, duly exulting over
those who had previously scorned them. The telltale scar on Harry's
forehead—a legacy of his infant encounter with the evil Lord Voldemort—
is as big a giveaway as any significant birthmark or cache of
letters eventually testifying to a downtrodden orphan character's true
nobility. Once safely at Hogwarts, he is treated as a hero before he has
done anything heroic: a gratifyingly effortless example of virtue rewarded
at no initial cost. Harry of course goes on to justify his reputation
with acts of daring and courage. But readers know he is safer
than he sometimes supposes. With seven planned books in this series,
there is no way Harry is going to disappear halfway through.
He is, in short, an easy hero for readers of all ages to identify with. In
looks, he is no film star, although in successive book jackets by different
artists his initial, nerdy, train-spotter face has been transformed
into something more flattering. As an orphan, he only knows his parents
as figures so ideal they actually laid down their lives to save his.
Such parents can be loved without the sort of qualification inevitably
brought about by day-to-day reality. They also give Harry extra justification
for hating his uncle and aunt, so extra nasty by comparison.
No room for guilt here, for even though they did bring him up, it was
in such a mean, neglectful way that gratitude is never an issue.
Harry's relationship with his own destiny means that the main events
in his life often happen because they have to, rather than through his
individual choice. This romantic difference from others is reinforced
in two other ways. Like all pupils at Hogwarts, he is separated from
the rest of the human race, or "muggles" for short, because he is a
wizard. This in itself represents a most agreeable fantasy: many other
children's books have capitalized on the way young readers like to
share the imaginary experience of feeling exclusively different from
others. Enid Blyton's Secret Seven gang and Arthur Ransome's young
seafaring adventurers, who so enjoy the contrast between themselves
and all the other "natives" on the shore, are just two of many possible
examples. But Harry is also separated from other wizards because of
his birthright. Young readers, accustomed to their own essential ordinariness,
are thereby offered a heady mixture when it comes to identifying
with Harry. Personal fantasies do not come much more appealing
than this, especially when they are embodied in someone who up
to the age of 10 was treated as of no account at all.
Those heroes who always win at games, beat up bullies, and later go
on to explore remote territories while forever setting a good example
can be rather dismaying to young readers all too aware of their own
deficiencies by comparison. As Graham Greene once wrote about
227
228 Children's Literature in Education
Graham Greene, The
Lost Childhood and
Other Essays, p. 15
Rider Haggard's characters, Quatermain and Curtis, "They were men
of such unyielding integrity (they would only admit to a fault in order
to show how it might be overcome) that the wavering personality of
a child could not rest for long against those monumental shoulders. A
child, after a l l . . . is quite well aware of cowardice, shame, deception,
disappointment. Sir Henry Curtis perched upon a rock bleeding from
a dozen wounds but fighting on with the remnants of the Greys
against the hordes of Twala was too heroic. These men were like
Platonic ideas: they were not life and one had already begun to know
it."
Harry and his friends avoid such painful comparisons since they
mostly excel in magical areas where readers cannot feel in competition.
Magic is the most effective compensatory fantasy ever invented
by humans, precisely because in real life we cannot do all those things
we most wish for. The next best thing, however, is to create imaginary
magical powers for ourselves, either through our own fantasies
or via those of someone else. The success of the Potter series shows
that the central need of humans, especially when they are young, to
transcend reality in the imagination has not diminished since the early
days of folktales and fairy stories. Flying like a bird, turning invisible,
eating from a plate that always refills itself are age-old imaginative
motifs also found in the Potter books along with many others.
I would suggest therefore that the popularity of the series so far owes
a great deal to the way that the author has breathed new life into
traditional forms of writing for children. A Cinderella plot set in a
novel type of boarding school peopled by jolly pupils already has a lot
going for it. Add in some easy stereotypes illustrating meanness, gluttony,
envy, or black-hearted evil to raise the tension, round off with a
sound, unchallenging moral statement about the value of courage,
friendship, and the power of love, and there already are some of the
important ingredients necessary for a match-winning formula. Written
up in good, workman-like prose with no frills attached and with an
excellent feeling for plot-driven, often highly suspenseful narrative,
and here are stories to satisfy both 9-year-olds and many older
readers—adults included—also in search of a return to melodrama,
moral certainty, and agreeable wish-fulfillment.
The Potter stories to date could therefore be described as good rather
than great literature. They whisk readers along without hinting at any
particular depth of argument or description. They entertain richly,
but rarely provoke, question, or inform. Characters are on the whole
two-dimensional, picked out by particular physical features plus one
overriding personality trait, such as adventurousness, scholarship, or
general timidity. Gender roles are stereotyped, with boys out for acThe
Rise and Rise of Harry Potter 229
Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 99
Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 199
tion and the one salient girl character forever urging caution. Harry
himself is pleasant enough but hardly a well-rounded personality. His
adventures so far are largely external to himself; there are few moments
of inner exploration or any serious reorganization of values,
priorities, or relationships. Elsewhere, centaurs, unicorns, and phoenixes
abound along with a Cerberus-type three-headed dog and an
equally mythological snake who, like Medusa, can kill with a single
glance. But unlike the classical creatures in C. S. Lewis's Narnia stories,
they exist here as walk-on parts, rather than as members of their
own separate universe following its own rules.
Rowling is closer to Lewis, however, in her robust attitude toward
dealing with Harry's enemies. Filch, the malicious school caretaker,
possesses an equally unpleasant cat named Mrs. Norris. For the pupils,
"it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs. Norris a good kick."
Later in the same story, Ron Weasley pleads with Harry, "Oh, let's kick
her, just this once," but is refused. Is this casual endorsement of
thoughtless cruelty to animals a throwback to the prewar days of
Richmal Crompton's William stories, where his dislike of certain cats
occasionally extended into outright killing? It would be foolish to labor
this point: Mrs. Norris, after all, is no ordinary cat just as Hogwarts
is not an ordinary school. The point remains, however; evil in
the Potter books, whether in human or animal form, is there to be
punished rather than understood or—perish the thought—even occasionally
forgiven. If that means conveying a basically intolerant, judgmental
attitude to readers, young as well as older, so be it.
Does it matter that these books describe a world of simple heroics
and moral absolutes? This depends entirely on a critic's expectations
of children's literature. For some, the best children's books contain
the finest writing, most sophisticated characterization, and an ability
to help children grow in understanding. For others, the best children's
literature is that which most successfully understands and caters
to a child's state of imaginative immaturity. On this latter reckoning,
the Potter stories come through with flying colors, since they
undeniably provide young readers with flattering, highly acceptable
fantasies of heroism, exclusivity, melodrama, and wish fulfillment. For
sterner critics, these same fantasies are basically facile, representing a
talking down to the very children whose lives we should be taking
more seriously for what they really are.
Both points of view could be argued. But writing off the Potter series
as little more than an inspired return to a regressive story-telling mode
linked to an equally old-fashioned black-and-white moral universe
would be doing the author an injustice. For one thing, the series is
not over; four more titles remain. Each story shows Harry one year
Children's Literature in Education
older than the last, which means that our hero, far from existing in a
timeless vacuum of endlessly repeated birthdays and Christmases, will
actually be 18 when his schooldays and story finish. By this time,
Harry and his author will have to face up to the existence of adolescent
questioning and uncertainty, whether in the field of morality,
sexuality, friendship, or indeed over the problem of defining what
exactly twentieth-century heroism truly consists of. While the stories
so far have been set in traditional mode, those to come will have to
make more acknowledgment of modern psychological realties if
Harry and his friends are going to look, sound, and behave like convincing
turn-of-the-century teenagers.
Harry began his stories at age 10; it could be argued that the early
books deliberately tie themselves to the more limited vision and expectations
of a small child, and that this situation will change as Harry
himself gets older. To criticize them for moral simplicity without
knowing the whole picture would therefore be unfair. The author
could easily have produced more Potter stories where Harry and his
friends stay basically the same age in the manner of previous successful
series by Enid Blyton and others. The decision to make him grow
older with every book, and coping with the problems that will arise
while still trying to satisfy younger readers, suggests a serious and
committed novelist who deserves respect and, so far, the benefit of
any doubt.
In fact, there are already some signs of greater depth and levels of
understanding in these earlier stories. Harry, for example, has to
school himself not to gaze forever into the magical Mirror of Erised,
within which he can see his dead parents smiling and waving at him.
As his headmaster explains, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and
Harry Potter and the forget to live." While the mirror "shows us nothing more or less than
Philosopher's stone, the deepest desire of our hearts," it is never certain that it is telling
p.157 the real truth. "Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what
they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is
real or even possible." This is the most moving and thoughtful scene
in the Potter books so far; there could be others to come.
Where Rowling has already excelled beyond argument is in her extraordinary
powers of invention. There have been many ingeniously
inventive children's authors before, but seldom one with an imagination
so endlessly fertile. The specialized vocabulary she invents is entirely
convincing: "Floo Powder" (magic substance that transports you
through chimneys); "Howler" (an exploding letter of complaint); "Parselmouth"
(someone who can talk to snakes). When it comes to
names, vicious Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia may be old hat, but are
well compensated for by immediately exciting and evocative names
230
The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter 231
Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone,
p. 98
Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets,
p. 172
Harry Potter and the
Prisoner ofAzkaban,
p. 15
Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone, p.
212.
like Lucius Malfoy, Miranda Goshawk, Adelbert Waffling, and Bathilda
Bagshot.
The author is also expert in thinking up new ways of turning everyday
reality on its head. This happens so often in her books it almost
becomes a matter of course, though nonetheless impressive and entertaining
for all that. Here, for example, is Harry faced by the normally
rather dull subject of staircases:
"There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide,
sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different
on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had
to remember to jump."
And here in the next volume is Ron Weasley on the topic of dangerous
books:
"There was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who read
Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives.
And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop
reading! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to
do everything one-handed."
The third story contains a typically spirited inventory of a Broomstick
Servicing Kit: "A large jar of Fleetwood's High-Finish Handle Polish, a
pair of gleaming silver Tail-Twig Clippers, a tiny brass compass to clip
onto your broom for long journeys, and a Handbook of Do-it-Yourself
Broomcare."
In these and other ways, the author successfully incorporates the
fizz and excitement of the modern video game into the prose page.
Hogwarts itself is an example of virtual reality, existing alongside the
normal world but only familiar to those in the know. The suspension
of time, and the way that Harry and his friends can chart everyone's
current movements on their special Marauder's Map are both familiar
devices from video games. Pages of description in a Potter book
can be as active as any of those screen games where clicking on to a
particular feature reveals some unexpected, hidden secret within.
The game of quidditch could come straight from any video arcade,
with scores rattling up on the side as broomstick riders swoop in
search of the elusive Golden Snitch, avoiding the assaults of aggressive
Bludgers on the way. Harry's encounters with absolute evil
("The most terrible face Harry had ever seen. It was chalk white
with glaring red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake") are already
familiar to most children from dungeons and dragons-type computer
games.
Children's Literature in Education
This ability to rival the energy of the video games on the printed page
while adding in a consistently brilliant line of jokey inventiveness is
surely Rowling's most innovatory literary gift, and one which marks
her out for critical as well as popular acclaim. Her prose style is not
always impressive—pupils "chortle" as they once did in Billy Bunter
stories, eyes are clapped on, chins are weak, and blushes extend to
the roots of the hair. Other lazy school story cliches sometimes crop
up, including formal handshakes and curt compliments like "Good
man!" Yet the pace of her writing, the abundance of magical detail,
and the consistency of invention and energy are all the author's own.
The great popularity of her series to date is particularly interesting.
The days have long past, if indeed they ever existed, when favorable
press notices significantly helped a book's popularity with children.
Appearing on the Carnegie and Guardian Book Award short list certainly
helped Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, with already
good sales climbing sharply as a result of the publicity after it won the
Smarties Award in November 1997. But fundamentally it is children
and their parents who turned the Potter series into a best-seller. This
happens every now and again when authors are taken up in a big
way, with news of their books spreading throughout playgrounds and
drawing rooms the length of Britain. Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, and
Judy Blume have all had this treatment. Other series also come to
mind: Goosebumps, Sweet Valley High, My Little Pony. All of these
have had a time of immense popularity, although almost entirely with
children, before beginning to fade away.
The way that Rowling's books have been seized on by the young as
well as older readers reminds us that there is still—in a television
age—a significant link between society and literature, and sometimes
very good literature at that. The existence of the special vocabulary of
the Potter books known only to those who read the books could have
helped children spot other fans and thus helped spread the word. The
increasing input of publicity merchants, such as putting the third eagerly
awaited Potter book in a chained cage on display in a bookshop
window until the day of sale, certainly ensured frequent newspaper
coverage for the book and the author all over Britain.
Rowling's success, however, was never merely the result of good publicity.
It also had nothing to do with government initiatives like the
literacy hour or the specially designated Year of Reading. To an extent,
her triumph is all her own, confounding certain contemporary
cliches about children's supposed reading taste on the way. The Potter
books, for example, run from 223 to 317 pages, at a time when we
are assured that the young have decreasing time for reading and a
poorer concentration span than before. The books feature a boy as
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The Rise and Rise of Harry Potter
the main character, although it is known that the majority of young
readers are female. While there is an important girl character, the
Potter books to date are ultimately very much boys' stories, their emphasis
far more on action than feeling.
Even so, they proved to be the right titles at the right time. Where
children lead, literary critics do not always want to follow. Roald Dahl
was one such flawed genius, delighting the young while sometimes
upsetting reviewers and librarians. It is too early to say whether Rowling
possesses anything like the same mixture of literary populism
linked to an extraordinary ability to get through to children. What is
certain is that she has done more than anyone else in the last two
years to spread the idea that it is books themselves that can be truly
exciting rather than an amorphous concept like "reading." The fact
that she now attracts an adult audience as well is equally impressive.
To succeed as she has done with books that in many ways remain a
critical success is an astonishing achievement in a new writer. While
Harry Potter excels through an accident of birth, Rowling has made it
by hard, professional work.
It is always cheering for children's literature critics when young
readers show that they can still become totally hooked on fiction.
Descriptions of children utterly absorbed in a Potter book are very
heartening at a time when the joys of reading are so often challenged
by other juvenile habits and activities. It is also good for the morale of
all "books people" when others get interested in their particular
topic. Seeing the Potter stories at the top of various newspaper bestseller
lists means that there are now more adults taking an interest in
what their children read even to the extent of enjoying some of the
same books for themselves. As it is, adult editions of all the first three
Potter books also exist, bearing a different book jacket that does not
immediately denote "children's book" to casual onlookers. If all this
results in more shared enthusiasm and family time for reading in general,
who could possibly complain?
On the other hand, are the Potter stories, with their old-fashioned
plots, settings, and characterization, necessarily ideal titles to reintroduce
parents and other adults to what is best in contemporary
children's literature? For me, it would be sad if these books came to
stand in the popular imagination for "children's books," in the way,
say, that Enid Blyton's stories did for so long among all but the relatively
well informed. Whatever their accomplishments, the Potter
books to date do seem in many ways to be looking back. Other contemporary
writers who are pushing forward with something very different
are equally deserving of such a huge take-up. If Rowling's success
marks a new beginning for all children's literature so far as adult
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Children's Literature in Education
attention is concerned, well and good. If the result is fame for her but
continuing adult indifference to the best of her many competitors,
then an opportunity will have been lost.
References
Anstey, E, Vice Versa (1882) numerous editions.
Greene, Graham, The Lost Childhood and Other Essays. London: Eyre and
Spottiswoode, 1951.
Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. London: Bloomsbury,
1997.
Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. London: Bloomsbury,
1998.
Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. London: Bloomsbury,
1999.
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