How Harry Potter Changed Children’s Literature

No one can deny the concrete and long-lasting effect the Harry Potter series has had on the world of children’s literature. Last summer marked the 25th anniversary of the release of the famous books in the United States. The first book of the series was released in England in June 1997 under the title “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” and on Sept. 1, 1998, Scholastic published the first book in the U.S., renamed “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” The seven-volume series has sold more than 500 million books worldwide in 80 languages since–that’s roughly one in every 15 people who own a copy of a Potter book. 25 years in, and the wizard still holds the American public under his spell.

“The novelty of Harry Potter books has not worn off at all; kids are still reading them,” says Lee Hope, head of children’s services for the Chattanooga Public Library. “We’re still replacing much-loved copies with new ones. We try to keep at least eight to 10 copies of each title. I’ve seen third-graders reading them, and I’ve seen parents coming in to check them out and read to their kids. A lot of high school and even college kids will check them out to re-read.”

A lot of kids can’t claim to have been avid readers before they met Harry, an example of the influence of the Potter series had increasing young readers that Hope says she witnessed. “Harry Potter helped kick off the boom in young-adult reading. The series brought in kids who were not interested in reading that much, but heard wonderful things about Harry Potter and came in for that,” says the librarian. The power of the Potter series did more than increase the number of young readers, however; it so drastically changed preconceived notions about the children’s publishing industry that it became known as “the Harry Potter effect.”

Following are five ways that this incredible and much-beloved series changed the young-adult genre.

1. Increased the size of YA books. Harry Potter was the first series that surpassed 300 pages, and later 800 pages, yet young readers weren’t deterred by their size. The Booklist Reader found that in 2006, the average middle-grade book was 174.5 pages long, and that average has risen to 290 pages. Research by the National Endowment for the Arts found that because of the popularity of the Potter series, there was a 37 percent increase in page lengths between 1996 and 2006.

2. Merged literary culture with pop culture. Midnight Potter book parties on release dates and mass-produced paraphernalia were primarily the realm of comic-book characters before the series. But Harry Potter’s rise in popularity coincided with the increased use of the internet, where fans could find other Potterheads just a chat room away. As fans of all ages became more active online, discussions of YA fiction to science fiction became commonplace.

3. The series increased empathy in children. Because Harry Potter maintained a staunch loyalty and friendship to stigmatized groups in the books – for example, Mudbloods, those half-Muggle, half-wizard students scorned by Lord Voldemort – he set an example of kindness. A 2014 study by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology discovered that reading Harry Potter books helped improve attitudes toward “out-groups,” a group with whom one didn’t identify.

4. Kicked off the boom in young adult reading. By 2004, in the midst of the Harry Potter phenomenon, sales of children’s lit were increasing by 2 percent each year, according to Vox Media. Since then, the children’s market has seen a sales increase of 52 percent, while the overall book market has only increased by 33 percent since 2004.

5. Opened the door to more YA series. “The release of Harry Potter really opened a lot of publishers’ eyes to the fact there is a huge market for well-crafted young-adult literature,” says Kelly Flemings of Barnes & Noble in Hamilton Place. Flemings says the YA genre has seen a trend in longer series thanks to Harry Potter. “Before Harry Potter, you might get kids to make it through three books of a trilogy. Now they are hungry for a series,” he says.

Allison Green
Boston Tutoring Services