Unfortunately, they don’t release an adult version in the US. So between that and a disliking of “Americanization” it’ll be sometime next week before I get my copy from Amazon.co.uk.
I’m a 38 year old who read a ton of books. As a kid the only series I read were Hardy Boys, Boxcar kids, and Little House on the Prarie. All from school. Little House in Big Woods was a gift from my first grade teacher at the end of the year that really turned me on to reading for fun.
I never heard of Narnia until the last few years and Oz was only a movie, who knew there were more?
The difference was I didn’t hear about books at home. Dad read the paper every day and Readers Digest. Mom not so much. They were raised in a generation that was busy getting jobs and getting by. My parents were great parents, they just weren’t big readers. They were too busy with keeping us warm and fed, somthing that was a huge struggle for their parents. For them, it was getting easier. For me not much of a problem at all.
Us Dopers are a literate bunch, how many of us came to it later in life? I didn’t hear of Shel Silverstien or Tolkin until a girlfiend in high school gave them to me from her parents reading to her as a girl. Book loving adults may pass on the classics to kids, but what about us kids on the fringe.
Harry Potter et.al. may have just turned a huge generation of kids into ones who will turn that love of stories and imagination and reading into parents who will pass that onto their kids.
The magnitude of that can’t be underestimated.
They may.
Unfortunately, there is no real evidence yet that this is true. There’s no real evidence that the first generation of Harry Potter readers have developed into heavier readers than the norm or that they stick with reading longer than the norm or that any of the Potter effect has or will transfer to other books.
Young adult fantasy series have seen a boom over the last decade, although only to a fraction of Potter’s sales. Adult fantasy is doing pretty good but overall sales appear to be down, especially now that the Tolkien movies have ended.
Both Scholastic and Bloomsbury, the two publishers of Potter books, have seen their stocks fall over the last couple of years. Potter accounts for 1/3 of Scholastic’s profits and the betting on Wall Street is that nothing coming up will replace that.
So it looks like the answer to why the Potter books are so popular is one answer that nobody wants to hear. Every once in a while the zeitgeist throws up something of phenomenal popularity that is unique, unprecedented, unfollowed, and unexplainable. There’s lots of good little reasons for Potter’s success, but no one GOOD reason that really accounts for it.
I think the books have been so popular for a lot of reasons.
There’s a ton of wish-fulfillment in them. Kid fantasies of the same sort that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory played into.
There’s an exotic world that’s right alongside the “real” world, meaning that even very young kids can see, and laugh at, the differences.
There are clear good guys and bad guys. A lot of novels get so tied up in shades of grey that everyone ends up detestable.
The idea of a “Chosen One” or messianic figure is very appealing to many people.
Kids being smart and clever and still having adult figures to look up to is also very appealing.
The series is long, allowing for maximum build up of attention and suspense.
There is a real sense of joy and wonder about the books. I never felt repulsed or dirtied by reading them–unlike some fantasy series.
Timing, timing, timing. The audience was ready, for whatever reason.
I think this is a big part of it. Someone like VCO3 who thinks of them only as fantasy and compares them only to other fantasy novels is missing the point.
This is another very important point. A big of the reason we’ve had long threads here discussing these books is because the leave us so much to discuss and guess about and speculate on and argue over.
And, within each book, Rowling uses all the tricks of mystery and suspense to keep readers turning pages. There are things that are Not What They Seem. There are characters who may be one of the good guys or one of the bad guys—in addition to all the characters we love and the ones we love to hate. There are questions we want answered, things we want explained. There are little things early on that have big repercussions later in the story.
And all the things that others (especially jsgoddess) have mentioned.
I think I might start a thread on that question; how did you become a reader, if you are one? So, may I quote you?
Exapno’s opinion notwithstanding, I think that many kids have become, at least, bigger readers than they otherwise might have been. There’s more acceptance now of long books–you don’t get so many kids whining that they need something short. And certainly the genre of children’s fantasy has benefited; old books came back into print, and oodles of mediocre, derivative (and even a few good) children’s fantasy books have been written.
Librarians always want to think they can save the world, so they get very into printing “If you liked Harry Potter…” booklists (not all fantasy, either) and recommending books to kids waiting for the next fix.
I don’t know how permanent it will be, but it’s better than nothing! At this point, with everyone surrendering to the lure of the screen (the Lidless Eye, as it is known in our house), every little bit helps.
I just have one observation about the violence, and since it pertains to the last book I’m spoiler-blocking it…
I don’t think the violence alone has a chance of really freaking out most kids, but I found the torture sequence in the last book downright icky; even if most of it happened off-screen, a main character get carted out of sight, spending an intermittent period screaming hideously, and emerging with bruises and knife wounds seems to be in rather poor taste.
Poor Hermione. 
Having said that, I do find it really neat that the last book focuses on the characters maturing under pressure… but I think it could’ve been done without all of the torture and crap.
Plus, that bit with Harry bumping into the little kids’ corpse in the big battle, while certainly telling, was really gross.
My personal likes and dislikes aside, though, I think the violence and increasingly dark nature of the books is one of the big reasons behind the series’ success: the books are written to be extremely accessible to kids, and yet they maintain a lot of succesful elements of young adult and adult fiction that you don’t ordinarily find at that level. Essentially, it’s taking an established genre and marketing it to a new audience.
To be honest, one of the things that appealed most to me was the element of British children at a nineteenth century boarding school (because really the characters seem to dress and live as if Victoria were still on the throne). So at the end of the sixth book I was more disappointed by Harry’s announcement that he wasn’t coming back for the final year than I was by the major death in the story. (I’m not sure whether I need to spoiler-box plot elements from the sixth book.)
Why shouldn’t he think of them as fantasy? Are you seriously saying that other fantasy books don’t have elements of “adventure, horror, humor, gross-out humor, sports, even a little teen [or adult] romance”?
Because they do, you know. Good fantasy has lots of elements in it besides just “fantasy,” whatever that is. Some of them have more than Potter.
I also agree with this … kind of. Maybe not so much the slash, but the internet itself. If we accept the premise that the books on their own are of generally high quality, the internet is a great way for fans to sustain their interest between books. From about the third book on (I honestly don’t remember that much hype for the second), it was almost impossible to log on to any general interest web site without some announcement about the release date of the upcoming book. I’m pretty sure that at least two of the major Harry Potter sites were fan-driven, not part of a PR machine.
This series seems especially well suited to internet conversation, as well. Similar to something like Lost, there is a lot to talk about … the books are very detail driven, and there are a lot of points open for discussion. Even better than something like Lost, there’s enough material in the books to make convincing arguments and guesses about what’s going to happen next (as an example, who is RAB?) which is very satisfying for readers. There is a payoff for people who pore over the details.
And of course, the internet is the best way to find and distribute the slash.
Anecdote doesn’t equal data, but I have recommended (and sold) hundreds of copies of other YA fantasy novels to kids who are/were looking for something ‘like Harry Potter’. I don’t know if they were big readers to begin with, but they do come in looking for novels, which is lovely. And it’s them, not their parents, looking for other big, thick fantasy novels.
I’m hopeful about the spillover. I’m not crazy about Harry Potter myself, but I’m grateful to Rowling for the number of kids I’ve sold The Neverending Story, The Dark is Rising, A Wizard of Earthsea, Sabriel, and His Dark Materials to.
That’s great and I hope it continues.
We just won’t know for sure for several more years at the earliest.
What js goddess said.
But also, for those who are concerned about the violence–read the non-Disneyfied fairy tales sometime. In Cinderella (one of the many versions), the wicked stepsisters cut off their own toes to try to fit that shoe, for one nasty example. I think that violence in books is different than the visual violence in TV and movies–I think our brains process it a different way (sometimes it’s more scary in a book, but not often, unless you’re reading Stephen King and not many 7 year olds are).
Kids like ghastly tales. Most kids do, anyway. I am the world’s biggest wimp-I was terrified as a child at the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, I never watch horror movies after I saw the first 20 minutes of “Halloween” etc. HP is scary (although compared to some horror books out there, she’s the Mr Rogers of horror), but not too scary. Reread Roald Dahl–those aunts in James and Giant Peach or Matilda’s school principal blow many Deatheaters out of the water. Kids also like adventure and the good guys winning. HP has all of that. I think that’s one reason they’re so popular.
As some people have suggested, I tend to think it’s that she managed to strike the exact right balance between British boarding-school fiction and fantasy fiction. The world is charming and fun because of the fantasy elements, but still familiar, easy to get into, and safe because of its basis in the real world.
The characters and plot are good, of course, as are the characters and plot in many books. I really think it’s the world she created that made it so widely-accessible and popular.
I guess I should have bolded my "only"s.
No, of course not. I’m saying that the Harry Potter books, though certainly fantasy, also justifiably belong to other genres (not least, the British school story—see Dewey Finn’s post). And that, whenever someone says, “Well, the Harry Potter books aren’t nearly as good as [Fantasy Series X]” (and it’s almost always another fantasy series they get compared to), I suspect they really mean that the Harry Potter books aren’t as good at doing what Fantasy Series X does. Even though they may be terrific at doing other things that Fantasy Series X doesn’t do well, if at all.
What I’m really trying to do is figure out why so many self-professed fantasy afficionados claim to be so unimpressed by Harry Potter, and I suspect, though I don’t know for sure, that it somehow has to do with them judging HP by the wrong criteria or comparing them to the wrong things. Because a novel can succeed at some things and fail, or not even try, at others. (A particular mystery novel might be terrific as a mystery but not so good as a novel, or vice versa. The works of Terry Pratchett are IMHO great as humor, as satire, as writing, but as fantasy they’re only so-so.) So I think, perhaps, many of the things that make Harry Potter popular and/or good are other than the things that make the fantasy fan say, “Now that’s a great work of fantasy.” But this is speculation; I could be off-base on this. I certainly don’t intend to limit or cast aspersions on fantasy.
The very first time I ever heard of the Harry Potter series was when the first book came out in the United States and there was a HUGE backlash against it by the Bible Belt protesters, who had this crazy notion that The Sorceror’s Stone promoted the practice of witchcraft and devil worship among children. Yet another backlash from people who obviously never read the book. Anyway, I’m not sure if they even realize it, but any publicity is good publicity, and this was probably what first made Harry Potter a household name.
Being that it was a children’s book, I didn’t even bother with it. However, when Prisoner of Azkaban first came out, JK Rowling did a book signing at my college. I didn’t attend the signing, but over the next week, EVERYBODY around my college were carrying around Harry Potter books. I borrowed a copy of Sorceror’s Stone from one of my friends and gave it a read…it definitely was a children’s book, but it was a good one. I never continued on with the series until after the first Harry Potter movie came out, which I enjoyed much more than the book. I HATED Chamber of Secrets (both the book and the movie), so I stopped right there and didn’t pick up Azkaban until the hype was starting up about Order of the Phoenix, particularly that it was going to be darker and drive a lot further away from children/young adult type literature. Little did I know that Azkaban would be (and having completed all 7 books, still is) by far my favorite book in the series. The tone of the book (dealing with Sirius and Lupin and the dementors rather than Voldemort for once) really dragged me in, and I think this was the latest book I read in an entire day. On that hook, I went straight into Goblet of Fire…which took me FOREVER to read, cuz it turned out to be my least favorite of the series, and it was way too bloody long. It probably took me two months to finish it, and I only even hurried up to finish because I was being pegged on to get to Phoenix, which really WAS supposed to be great, and I really had to force myself to finish Goblet. Fortunately Phoenix did live up to its expections, and despite being even longer than Goblet, I finished it within a week. Now that I was caught up, it was only natural that I read Half-Blood Prince when it came out (despite getting a spoiler bomb before even reading one page of it), which is why I started reading Deathly Hallows the moment a legitamite version showed up online, so that I could finish it before most people even started it.
Anyway, that’s what got ME into the series. I think that hype is a big factor. Davinci Code keeps getting mentioned here, and the ONLY reason I even read that book was because nobody could shut up about it back in 2003. And it sucked, just for the record. I have no clue WHY it even got so much hype in the first place.
Actually, the only posts in which The Da Vinci Code was mentioned was in the OP and in my post, and the only thing said was that it and the novels in the Harry Potter books had all sold about 60 million books. If you’re going to analyze the bestselling novels of all time, you would have to look at The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter books, and The Da Vinci Code, as well as, for instance, the next two bestselling novels of all time, In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? by Charles Sheldon and Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann, which both sold more than 30 million copies. What do all those books have in common? I don’t see any common thread. I have no idea why they all were huge bestsellers.
OMG UMBRIDGE VS THE TRUNCHBULL!
I’m not that well-read in fantasy. But what about the huge epic struggle theme? How much fantasy has really done that to extreme since LoTR, with The Hero with a Thousand Faces compliancy, clear lines between good and Evil, and a likable supervillain? Tales of Earthsea have the scope, but not the epic struggle. The A Song of Ice and Fire series is epic, but good and evil are blurred as hell. Similarly, the struggle in His Dark Materials is too confusing.
None of the explanations offered so far have come anywhere close to explaining the sales of the Harry Potter books. The various literary elements in the books that people have cited all appear in other books. Indeed, various combinations of these elements appear in other books, and those books aren’t as popular. It’s not the genre of the Harry Potter books either. There’s nothing new about English-language children’s fantasy series. They have been coming out regularly since at least the time of the Alice books by Lewis Carroll. There’s nothing new about English public school stories. They were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There’s nothing new about stories of schools for wizards.
If you wanted to explain the huge popularity of certain novels, it would have to be something that accounted for The Lord of the Rings (150 million copies), The Da Vinci Code (60 million copies), the Harry Potter books (60 million copies each), In His Steps (over 30 million copies), The Valley of the Dolls (over 30 million copies, To Kill a Mockingbird (almost 30 million copies), and Gone with the Wind (almost 30 million copies). For any single one of those books, it’s possible to come up with dozens of unique characteristics that define those books. The problem is to show why those characteristics caused the popularity.
Someone will probably say that each of the novels happened to catch the mood of the time. I don’t see that, and anyway it can be argued that, on the contrary, each of these popular novels actually was one of the causes of the mood of the time. I don’t see that anyone in this thread has produced anything but a circular explanation of the popularity of the Harry Potter books.
Incidentally, I’m making no claim about the literary qualities of any of the above-mentioned books. This thread is about the popularity of the Harry Potter books, not the literary quality of them. I don’t wish to argue about whether any of these books are great books or not.