Harry Potter and the rise of children’s books

How popular are the Harry Potter books?

By almost any measure, they are the most popular children’s books ever written. Each of the first four titles in the series has sold between 12 million and 16 million copies in the U.S., eclipsing Charlotte’s Web—just under 12 million sold since 1952—as the all-time best-sellers for their age group. (Picture books for younger kids, such as The Poky Little Puppy and Goodnight, Moon, have racked up numbers closer to Harry Potter.) Two-thirds of American children have read at least one Harry Potter novel, and book five, The Order of the Phoenix, has already sold more than 9 million copies since its release on June 21. Worldwide, well over 200 million Harry Potter books have been sold. They have been translated into more languages than any book except the Bible.

Are all the readers children?

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Harry Potter has a huge adult following. In the U.K., hundreds of thousands of people have paid extra for editions of the books with more sophisticated dust jackets. This has flummoxed some defenders of literary standards. “Why would grown-up men and women become obsessed by jokey latency fantasies?” asked novelist A.S. Byatt in The New York Times. When author Anthony Holden served as a judge for Britain’s prestigious Whitbred Prize, he successfully argued that naming Harry Potter book of the year over a new translation of Beowulf would send “a signal to the world that Britain is a country that refuses to grow up and take itself seriously.”

Have other children’s books been popular with adults?

Of books written specifically for children, only J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy has a significant adult readership. But there are gray areas. “Is Huckleberry Finn an adult novel that children like or a children’s novel that adults like?” said the head of one publishing house recently. Many books now read primarily by adolescents—such as The Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies—were originally intended for grown-ups. In fact, the phenomenon of separate books for children is relatively recent. Robin Hood, Aesop’s Fables, Mother Goose, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Robinson Crusoe, The Three Musketeers, and many other books we now think of as timeless children’s classics were really written for their parents.

What was the first true children’s book?

Nothing today’s kids would want to read. It was probably the 1641 Puritan tract Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes, an anthology of somber tales with heavy-handed morals about the importance of revering God and obeying parents. For many decades, all children’s books were in this vein. One popular title was A Token for Children: being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of several young Children. From this era, only John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress had any shelf life. In 1744, John Newberry (whose name now graces America’s most prominent children’s book award) started the first publishing house devoted entirely to books for young people. He specialized in volumes of light verse, but even these came with moral lessons attached.

When did kids’ books become fun?

In 1865, with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll’s revolutionary book was the first to capture how children really are, rather than how adults want them to be. It introduced the elements we now think of as hallmarks of children’s literature, combining humor and a strong narrative, along with playful winks to adults, in the service of a tale that helped young people understand their world without a lecture. Alice’s instant success inspired the fantasies of The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan, as well as plucky heroines like the one in Anne of Green Gables.

Do kids still read these books?

Not so much. In the mid–20th century, formulaic books such as the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series crowded the classics off kids’ bookshelves, as baby boomers sought out exciting narratives that could compete with television and comics. The next wave of children, caught up in post-’60s turmoil, embraced a new genre of novels focusing on sex, drugs, death, and family dysfunction. By the 1990s, these books too had fallen out of favor, as their unsubtle lessons on self-esteem and diversity began to feel as ponderous as the preaching of the Puritans. To fill the void, kids turned to an emerging wave of escapist fantasy—Harry Potter, Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” saga, and Lemony Snicket’s “Series of Unfortunate Events.”

How good are these novels?

They’re imaginative and well crafted, but few people would claim that any of them are great literature, worthy of comparison to Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, Tom Sawyer, or “The Chronicles of Narnia.” But some critics believe that because there are so many children’s books being written now, young people today have more good choices than at any time in the past. Seeing the wild success some of these books enjoy, celebrated authors of adult fiction are trying their hand at fiction for kids. Recent years have seen children’s books by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Chabon, Carl Hiaasen, and others hoping to meet the challenge posed by C.S. Lewis’ aphorism “No book is really worth reading at the age of 10 which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of 50.”

Sexuality, swearing, and Satan

Every year, hundreds of concerned parents try—often successfully—to get certain books barred from schools and libraries. Judy Blume, a frequently targeted author, says that what usually drives parents to attempt censorship are “the three S’s: sexuality, swearing, and Satan.” Harry Potter books—the most frequently challenged of 2002, according to the American Library Association—run afoul of the third S for their celebration of witchcraft and wizardry. The magazine Christian Parenting Today called Harry “pure evil.” Here are some other books that some people find objectionable:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—Use of the word “nigger”The Chocolate War—Curse wordsBridge to Terabithia—Sexual contentAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland—Puts animals and humans on the same levelLittle House on the Prairie—Offensive to Native AmericansTwelfth Night—Men dress as women and women as menLittle Red Riding Hood—In some versions, Red Riding Hood is bringing wine to GrandmaScary Stories to Tell in the Dark—Too dark, too scary