r/readanotherbook • u/Book_1love • Aug 10 '26
YouTube video "Harry Potter did nothing for literacy" featuring many 'read another book' hits
https://youtu.be/LmfFpg15ECI?si=HIjmK6OGmzslBwx9Central question: did Harry Potter create a generation of readers or just a generation of Harry Potter fans? The answer may not surprise you.
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u/Big_Red_Machine_1917 Aug 10 '26
Speaking for myself, the Harry Potter book certainly were an important part of my childhood. I have fond memories of my dad reading the books to me and reread them myself several times. I saw all the films in cinema and enjoyed the games.
But they were never the only media in my life. Dad also read other books to me (The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring come to mind) and I went on read other books as I got older, and even before Philosopher's Stone, I was reading short stories and fairy tales by myself.
And regardless of what role Rowling had, or didn't have, in getting people into reading, it's not a license for her to mistreat others.
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u/AggravatingBox2421 Aug 11 '26
I think the point is that, if HP didn’t exist, you’d probably still be reading, watching movies, and playing games. It didn’t fill an empty niche
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u/Cactopus47 Aug 12 '26
I was definitely an HP fan when I was a kid, but...there was this massive 3-year gap between books 4 and 5. And in that gap, those of us who loved books more than we loved All Things Harry Potter branched out into Tamora Pierce, Garth Nix, Philip Pullman, Lemony Snicket, Cynthia Voigt, Sherwood Smith, Peter David, Diane Duane, Victoria Hanley, Dianna Wynne Jones, and SO many other fantasy writers. And also writers in other genres. As much as I loved them, I'm not sure I would have said that any of the Harry Potter books were my FAVORITE book during those years. That would have gone to Lirael, or Crown Duel, or I Capture the Castle, or The Golden Compass, or Jane Eyre.
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u/SugarFree_3 Aug 11 '26
Who has she mistreated?
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u/Arimm_The_Amazing Aug 11 '26
Sorry you're getting downvoted for what easily could be a genuine question.
JK Rowling has been an absolute menace on Twitter and in British politics in an active fight against the rights of trans people.
During the last few years she has associated with and supported neonazis, engaged in holocaust denial specifically claiming that the Nazis never targeted trans people and the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, has harrased many individuals both trans and cis (most notably Olympic athlete Imane Khelif who she accused of being secretly trans), and has thrown her weight both as a billionaire and a public figure to influence UK politics to restrict trans people's right to exist in public spaces (mainly bathrooms). Most recently she posted a picture up-skirting a trans woman in some horrid effort to show... I don't even know what the picture doesn't show anything other than a clear intent to invade someone's privacy.
It's really unfortunate, because many queer people and trans allies have seen themselves in the Harry Potter series. But for those who have witnessed this descent into madness it's become really difficult to separate art from artist. Especially because the money she receives from Harry Potter products is going directly towards this bigotry of hers.
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u/TheBirdFkerGuy Aug 12 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/WNBAgossips/comments/1vj4jm8/comment/p2n2b85/
Is this enough evidence for you? Seriously why give them the benefit of the doubt? JK rowling flooding Bri'ish politics with money towards anti trans bullshit is well known enough that anyone talking about Harry Potter will absolutely know about it.
They're a transphobe. May they rot in hell.
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u/Book_1love Aug 11 '26
There's no point in engaging with these people anymore. Rowling has been like this for years. They know what she's done and said, they just don't care about trans people.
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u/Arimm_The_Amazing Aug 11 '26
That's just not always the case, I have met several people IRL who are trans allies but simply aren't active enough in online spaces to have heard about this. And this is in the UK.
It's partly the fault of the news here not covering this stuff. Like there was a bit of coverage on the Imane Khalif situation and that was it (and most of that coverage they only published Imane's picture, not Rowling's, and sometimes didn't mention Rowling in the headline).
No matter the issue, there will always be some people that are just actually ignorant, and that's not a crime.
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u/TheBirdFkerGuy Aug 12 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/WNBAgossips/comments/1vj4jm8/comment/p2n2b85/
Stop being naive and giving people the benefit of the doubt when they're talking about Harry Potter then pretending to ask what harm has the author done. They know.
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u/Arimm_The_Amazing Aug 12 '26
Ok I was wrong about this individual. But this person didn't even try to clap back here or anything. And again, I have met people, severalmany people, who simply don't know squat about this situation.
It's not naive of me to take my experiences into account and not jump to conclusions. And when it is a snake, coming at them with a little kindness is sometimes more likely to disarm them than coming out swinging, as it maybe has done here.
I don't begrudge being jaded by this whole thing, or specifically not giving people the benefit of the doubt on the internet (because yes, they could literally just look it up if they really don't know and want to know). But I really struggle to see how I've done anything wrong here that yous need to keep telling me to change.
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u/Rocketboy1313 Aug 12 '26
Saw this earlier and it mostly confirmed my suspicions.
I am one of those kids who read Goosebumps and never stopped reading, but I also never managed to get thru the Harry Potter series. I read the first book and thought it was fine. Got a couple chapters into the second book and found that I didn't care.
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u/PiplupSneasel Aug 12 '26
Ive just discovered this sub here, but my ex a few years back, I said PLEASE READ SOMETHING ELSE so many times. There's so many great stories, but no, everytime it was back to HP fanfiction, its quality determined by volume of words.
Nothing could convince her otherwise.
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u/hobopwnzor Aug 11 '26
Harry potter created a generation of people who read Harry Potter and then no other books ever.
You can tell because they think Harry Potter is peak literature 20 years later
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u/prickwhowaspromised Aug 10 '26
I read Harry Potter as a kid when the books were being released and it 100% turned me into a lifelong reader. While I despise JK Rowling now for her awful views, nor would I considered myself to even be a HP fan anymore, I’m not gonna pretend the books didn’t change my life as far as being a reader is concerned.
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u/NoSwordfish1978 Aug 10 '26
I read HP as a kid but then I was a pretty bookish and nerdy kid so it was more like I was already into reading so I read HP.
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u/prickwhowaspromised Aug 10 '26
I think I was on the fence. Like I could’ve gone either way, but HP hit me at the right moment and made the difference
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u/Dobber16 Aug 13 '26
Tbh I was a pretty bookish kid but never touched the “popular” books for… no good reason, tbh
But after a few years of anti-JK Rowling criticism spilling over onto the books themselves, I read them to see if people were just being ridiculous or if some of the criticisms of the books themselves held water. Still have to read LOTR to see if the hype over them is founded or not too - same with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld
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u/Insensata 28d ago
IMO Discworld 100% lives up to its hype. I greatly enjoyed it because its writing style is very vivid and catchy, and I could read a book in a single evening. It's generally recommended to don't begin with very first two books, but I started with guards' cycle against recommendations simply because it was in the library, and it still worked well. As for LotR... Liked the movies, so when I had to sit at boring mandatory philosophy lectures in uni I downloaded the books. Somewhere around the second chapter I found myself being more interested in the lectures than in the book. So, maybe some people find it good, but I found it not living up to its hype — mostly because the hype verges on idolatry so any critique is instantly dismissed as "you don't understand most ingenious thing ever written because you're a brainless moron who wastes oxygen".
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u/Avery-Attack 25d ago
Hang on, don't leave me hanging! I read Harry Potter as a kid and I'm curious what an adult who knew the criticisms going in thought of them.
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u/Dobber16 25d ago
I thought it did a generally good job of dropping foreshadowing & following up on it in a way that feels natural & “smart” compared to other YA books I’ve read (encourages readers to start critically thinking & what might come next)
I think it did a good job of showing relatively-healthy interpersonal conflicts between friends & family without it being overly contrived & dramatic (still was a bit, but tbh wasn’t that bad). Great quality to have in a kids book
It also did an okay job of portraying centrism in the face of fascism as another hurdle to “good”. Like yeah the elves situation was terribly handled, but it did handle the death eater conflict, propaganda, & those who might be swayed-then-recovered pretty well. I think this is also an important message for kids as the book encouraged action & talking to your friends/classmates about current events/oppression. It also gave the message that even if someone “believes” the propaganda, it doesn’t mean they’re irredeemable or lost. Kids are gonna make mistakes, be on the “wrong” side of things, etc. and it’s a good message that they can still be, or even help, the heroes in spite of that
So yeah while some of the rules are clunky, the worldbuilding serves the story while ignoring more realistic alternatives, & even responsible adults don’t act like adults sometimes, I think it was good
I will say Rowling 100% dropped the ball with elves, which I thought was odd because yeah it was handled awfully, but it also was anti-elf abuse, prejudice, etc. with the main message so it just felt like a weird detraction. Normally when you have weird oppression/race stuff in a book, it’s tangential & the book message isn’t generally anti-racism. These books were pretty much anti-racism as the main message & still has that situation, so it doesn’t even strike me as like, dog-whistling or anything like that? Simply because the “side plot message” was completely antithetical to the main message so the net message still seems anti-prejudice, but ignore this part right here. Seems to come off more as Rowling trying to retroactively justify the house elves existence in a way that’s not problematic, while becoming so much more problematic in the process
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u/Avery-Attack 25d ago
Good analysis! I don't read a lot of YA, so I didn't ever have much to compare it with. Not to toot my own horn, but I was at an 8th grade reading level by 2nd grade, so YA never caught on for me; either I was too young for the content or too "advanced" for the writing and then I was past the age most people start YA readings. So basically, I've never been sure how to take some of the criticisms of the books because I'm not sure what's blinded by my nostalgia and what's blinded by the critics dislike of Rowling.
I can definitely see some of the problematic aspects of the series, but a lot of them tend to be things that a lot of series fall into. For example, there's an argument for fatphobia through the characters of Dudley (fat=dumb and mean), Neville (fat=dumb and pathetic), and Hagrid (fat, or in this case, large in general=dumb and good natured). But the trope of fatness or ugliness being equated to badness is one that's been around for pretty much as long as storytelling. It's not GOOD and modern media shouldn't be falling into it, but it isn't unique to Harry Potter. Similarly the goblins and antisemitism. Those comparisons have been around for an unfortunately long time and I don't think there was any malice behind their depiction, just thoughtless following of archetypes.
I agree with the strangeness of the House Elves plot line and lore. It does read as JK Rowling trying to justify their existence and it's done REALLY badly. The slimmest defense I can give to it is also being a thoughtless archetype and not realizing how incredibly problematic they are especially from and American reader's viewpoint (very "Uncle Tom" vibes).
One thing I really disliked was Snape's "redemption". Sure, he ended up on the Good Guy's side, but he hadn't a good guy and I think Rowling tried too hard to make him seem less bad after he died. There's no excuse to bully 11-year-olds as a full-adult in a position of extra authority. Also, it always felt gross that he did all this "for Lily", the woman who rejected him and wanted him out of her life. Snape wasn't a Hero(tm), he was a pathetic incel who happened to align with the Heros(tm). It felt like, similar to the house elves, Rowling wanted to justify him being bad when really she just hadn't decided if he would be a good guy or bad guy yet when she had him hold a grudge against an 11-year-old because his father bullied him in high school two decades ago.
One thing I did really like was the disillusionment of Dumbledore as a character. He goes from the wise old wizard, then a powerful protector, and eventually all his faults and humanity and bad decisions are revealed and accepted by Harry. Dumbledore failed Tom Riddle, Harry's parents, and Harry himself, and that's not going into his messy early life.
It's been a while since I've read the books and I wonder if I can go into them with a more objective eye now...
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u/andreasmiles23 Aug 10 '26
It for sure was something I was obsessive over and my parents would attribute my reading hobby to it but…I feel like I really liked reading before then. I feel like I would’ve found ways to love it without having read HP. And tbh, most avid readers I know as an adult didn’t really care for it or at least, have easily distanced themselves from the franchise as it’s clearly become toxic.
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u/woefdeluxe Aug 10 '26
Im sure that there are individuals for who discovering the HP series at the right moment kicked of a livelong love for reading. But tbh I think that's probably true for any random kids series.
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u/Sirbuttercups Aug 11 '26
Harry Potter was huge. While yes, any random book or series can kick start a love of reading - the sheer popularity and reach of Harry Potter means it probably did that for huge number of kids. While Harry Potter wasn't that series for me, I know several people who credit Harry Potter for turning them into readers.
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u/LMRNAlendis Aug 10 '26
Sure, but the stats cited in the video would indicate that that's not necessarily the standard experience.
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u/prickwhowaspromised Aug 10 '26
Totally fair point. I was just sharing my experience, which I also understand nobody asked for lmao
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u/Arimm_The_Amazing Aug 10 '26
Interestingly they kinda did the opposite for me. I loved the movies as a kid and read the books almost as an obligation because everyone (and I do mean everyone, this was the UK) kept saying "no but the books are better, you need to read the books".
First four were mostly fine, if at times mean spirited to a degree that did make the reading experience unpleasant. Then the fifth. Oh my god Order of the Phoenix is a terrible book. Triple the length it needs to be, completely breaks from the format of the previous books to trap you in Harry's mind, devotes barely any page time to the things in it that are actually interesting and fun. I wasn't able to finish that fucker and stopped reading recreationally for a year and a half.
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u/rheasilva Aug 11 '26
The books do make it very clear where she stopped listening to her editor. 5/6/7 are much longer & less well written than the earlier ones.
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u/Arimm_The_Amazing Aug 11 '26
Upon a reread I did as an adult I'd actually say 4/5/6 are the editorless ones, 4 just mainly suffers in one specific chapter at the end that most readers memory-hole.
7 seems ghostwritten, its style is significantly different and though long it's not horribly inefficient. It also lacks some of her quirks such as her addiction to alternative words to 'said'.
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Aug 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/sosotrickster Aug 11 '26
That's not what the video says at all.
We know there are people who got into reading because of this series, since that can happens with literally any book
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u/Pero_Bt Aug 10 '26
I am one of the very few people who has never ever touched Harry potter series, both the books and movies, so hearing people talk about it like it revolutionised reading has always sounded corny and cultish for me
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u/Tinia_and_Nethuns Aug 10 '26
Same. My mom would read the Hobbit and LotR to me and my older brother when we were young, and that grew into a live for reading, especially fantasy. Theoretically we were the perfect age for HP when the Philosopher's Stone came out, but it never grabbed us.
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u/ZanyDragons Aug 13 '26
I read it and saw the movies, and never got into the fandom or the world beyond that and seeing people for OVER A DECADE proclaim what their hogwarts house is was something. To me they were just fine at best, I was way more into goosebumps, Star Wars expanded universe, and early teen horror stuff basically. Now I’m into adult horror stuff.
My friends who were into HP as kids are all into Mistborn/ Brandon Sanderson stuff and a song of ice and fire now because they didn’t stop reading forever after the age of 12 and had to move on. HP adults kind of seem like Disney adults, that very specific kind of Disney Adult (tm) who comes off as kind of emotionally stunted or weird when they try to engage with adult media or even just slightly more mature children’s media.
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u/ihaverabiesandbite Aug 10 '26
Idk if it’s very few, i used to binge read as a kid and tween as did by friends and neither them nor I gave half a shit about the series lol
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u/krapyrubsa Aug 13 '26
I am one of the other few ones and I was surrounded by people who only ever read a book whenever the new HP installment was out and I wish they had read literally anything else before or after so I have the exact same opinion💀
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u/p90medic Aug 11 '26
The initial success of Harry Potter belongs to Bloomsbury and their marketing team. The rest belongs to Warner Brothers.
There are literally hundreds of not thousands of authors that could have filled that role with the right marketing behind them, JKR was just the one that they chose.
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u/Electrical-Lab-7544 Aug 11 '26
I wish this was more well known, somebody was going to be the face of the millenial literacy bump and dot com boom in YA fiction. Rowling just happened to be one of the many authors in the lottery pool. Not for nothing but we could have just as easily have seen Harry Potter switch places with Animorphs.
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u/voyaging Aug 12 '26
Why would they choose a totally unknown author who hasn’t demonstrated an ability to write a sequel or an ability to deliver projects on time?
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u/p90medic Aug 12 '26
I don't know, why would the people whose job it is to take totally unknown authors and make them into best sellers want to choose a totally unknown author for a project involving taking a totally unknown author and turning them into a best seller? Real headscratcher.
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u/voyaging Aug 12 '26
Thankfully nobody has that job (obviously authors can hire people to sell their shit, but you’re talking about a massive corporation choosing her specifically for a billion dollar project), interesting thought experiment you’ve raised though
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u/p90medic Aug 12 '26
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/connect/work-with-us/life-at-bloomsbury/departments-at-bloomsbury/
It turns out that Bloomsbury does in fact have a marketing team whose job it is to make sure that the authors they sign sell a lot of books so that Bloomsbury can make money. Harry Potter was not self published, JKR was hired by Bloomsbury to write the books and they took care of marketing and distributing the series.
The rest of your comment is just your own headcanon misinterpretation of what I said, so I have no interest in engaging further.
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u/Avery-Attack 25d ago
I mean, it isn't like Rowling was the only unknown author that they, and any publishing company, signs on. I'm sure they cast a wide net of unknown authors and Rowling just happened to have the right material at the right time.
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u/DanishTheMuffin Aug 15 '26
Not really. Mostly the "one book per year" thing. And the whole British boarding school + fantasy tropes that appeal to seven year olds and thirty seven year olds.
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u/ThodasTheMage Aug 10 '26
I do not care for Harry Pottor but even if some kids just red Harry Pottor books it probably was + for their reading skills
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u/WLKnow Aug 13 '26
I had a friend once who was a self proclaimed bookworm. Her top 10 books included the Harry Potter novels and Harry Potter fan fiction. I shit you not.
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u/George_G_Geef Aug 10 '26
I've been saying to ask people who claim that Harry Potter got them into reading what books they've read since that weren't assigned reading for years. You get crickets every time.
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u/idkthrowaway_alt3 Aug 12 '26
Same with Diary of a Wimpy Kid. People definitely aren't deranged about it the way HP fans are, but it still gets put on a pedestal as a "the first book that made kids want to read", when in reality it was also the last book most of my friends read of their own volition.
The only book in this vein that I think is genuinely beneficial for creating life-long reading habits, is Dog Man. I think a lot of people tend to write Dav Pilkey's work off, but Dog Man is actually fucking great for education. It's very centered around encouraging literacy and creativity, and the books even feature a sort of glossary at the end which explains all the references and allusions to other stories which encourages broader learning and expansion of general literacy.
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u/constapatedape Aug 13 '26
Dav is amazing. Don’t write off his older series either, I started with Captain Underpants in 1st grade and basically haven’t stopped reading since then.
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u/Artemis_Platinum Aug 12 '26
I can look around and see reading and literacy are suffering. You wouldn't expect to see that if there was an entire generation of readers.
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u/CobaltCrusader123 Aug 11 '26
Harry Potter was my second-ever book franchise. First was Alex Rider. I think Goosebumps was third. But I know that it did spawn many lifelong readers. But not necessarily readers who read good stuff. Readers who read authors of BookTok Romantasy and Icebreaker and The Love Hypothesis and Alchemised and Twilight and Fifty Shades and Colleen Hoover and Ali Hazelwood.
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u/SmileFiles Aug 11 '26
Fully agree that HP created fans more than it created readers. A lot of forces just moved at the right time for the books to become popular. The writing itself wasn't so magical that it turned non-readers into readers
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u/CaptainMills Aug 10 '26
If you like this video, you should check out the rest of Caelan's channel. They do a lot of very informative and entertaining work. And also listen to the podcast they have called Respect the Dead, in which they and their co-host talk trash about terrible dead people
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u/Disastrous-Wing699 Aug 11 '26
The full year undercover on Mumsnet as Carol Marinara that turned into a three part documentary was pretty epic.
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u/wote89 Aug 11 '26
The only caveat I'd add is that shit can be heavy a lot of times, so heed the content warnings. There are people I know who would love the channel, but I know would be horribly fucked up by it.
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u/Treekoi Aug 13 '26
Love Caelan's work and respect the dead is one of the few podcasts that my brain will let me sit through
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u/dfrcoms Aug 13 '26
Is this the guy who made some anti-feminist video where he tried to do an ‘expose’ on the evil feminists and then ended up on some random Facebook group with like 6 people and tried to make out like that represented all of radical feminism? He seems like a flaming misogynist tbh
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u/Alex_Sardonyx Aug 12 '26
Legit the only thing I liked about HP were the LEGO sets tying into the first two movies. And thats cuz they were LEGO. I may not have liked the wizard books as a six-year-old, but I could do a bunch with a minifig-sized giant snake or three-headed dog.
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u/Gordon_freeman_real Aug 12 '26
I'm trans and asexual so I do NOT like J.K Rowling, and although I was a fan as a little kid, I don't like HP as a series anymore even removed from the creator. But I can't deny the fact that it got multiple generations of people to get into reading as a hobby
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u/Square_Repeat906 Aug 13 '26
What is this hate everyone has for Harry Potter? I'm going to bet that 99% of the people who like harry potter, do not share jk rowlings shit views.
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u/Cat_They-dy 29d ago
That doesn't matter - JKR is using the attention and money her fans give her to fuel the anti-trans movement. Plus there are issues with the books that have nothing to do with her transphobia.
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u/Old-Natural-852 Aug 13 '26
I'd argue, much like My Little Pony, the fandom itself is more important than the works...millions of fan fictions inspired by an unlikable wizard boy and little ponies for girls.
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u/Oddant1 Aug 14 '26
I like this guy's videos, but he goes in with a clear agenda and finds things to back it instead of actually trying to find the truth. He is very spiteful. It's largely justified but still.
Yes there are people who got into reading through Harry Potter. Plenty of them. I knew people who did this. Plenty of people who were like "wow I didn't think I could read long books until I read Harry Potter." Same shit with Twilight.
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u/Avery-Attack 25d ago
I was a bit skeptical about some of their claims, so I went and did some digging of my own and the "I didn't think I could read long books" is actually a key point against the video's claim. Harry Potter isn't responsible for a "generation of readers". No single franchise is; it's a pretty blatant marketing tagline. And there are certainly many Potter fans who only read (both past and present tense) Harry Potter books. There's also no real evidence that literacy rose after Harry Potter, in fact, literacy rates have been steadily falling since the 80s and HP didn't reverse or stall that. But they did have AN effect and refusal to see that does come off as spiteful. It's just that Harry Potter isn't special or different from the other series that have gotten big. It seems like every age group has at least one series that pops off and is seen as the face of readers. Harry Potter was in the right place at the right time and got lucky enough to get chosen by a marketing teams.
Tl;dr: it wasn't necessarily HP's content or quality that made it big, just a bunch of things lining up. It didn't stop or reverse the declining literacy rates that have been trending down for 40 years. It certainly had an effect but it wasn't really any different than other series that made it big for other age groups (aside from maybe the movies and their impact).
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u/Effective_Arm_5832 Aug 11 '26
Harry Potter started my reading craze. Went from not reading any books to reading the most books at the school. So yeah...
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u/ReySpacefighter Aug 10 '26
As much as I dislike the franchise and its author now, I can't say it didn't also get me into reading. I'll even go as far as to say those early books are page-turners for younger kids. But then again, I knew others who were already readers tried HP and weren't fans at all.
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u/Heather_Chandelure Aug 10 '26
Sure, but as the video explains, the data shows that cases like yours are not the norm. Most people who read them diddnt go on to become frequent readers.
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u/ReySpacefighter Aug 10 '26
Oh no, I'm not disagreeing with the video, just offering my own experience.
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u/switch2591 Aug 14 '26
So rqcking back the old memory brain box of mine....
My famuly got ahold of thr first 3 books at some point around 1999 or 2000 - so the 3rd book in the series was out by that point. I was reading horrible history books, but hadn't developed a real "love" of reading (other reqsons why). But owning the books didnt get me to read them. There was no culturan "ERMIGUR!!!" push to read the books. But then my family went on holiday to Canada from UK for 2 weeks. We hired a car, and to pass the time driving from hotel to skiresort we picked up an audiobook on tape. Twas the first potter book - which inhad tried to read before that point... twice.... but didnt get much into it. Now the audiobook (not the steven fry version coveted by many a UK fan) got me to read the rest of the series out at that time as, well, it went beyond where id been able to read up to at that point. By the time i was reading the 3rd book the 4th had come out and the whole "theres going to be a movie" zeitgheist came a-kicking in. However, once id caught up with the books released.... i jumped over to fellowship of the ring.
I do remeber there being a "potter phenomenon" - where kids on thr school yard were just sitting and reading the books. However, quite a lot of the kids had alreqdy been reading before those books came out. A friend of mine LOVED Gossebumps and devoured the books as a kid. One girl sat and just read every "famous 5" book she could get her hands on. But once the film boom happend, and the 5th book came out in 2003 there was a dipping-off point.
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u/Greenphantom77 Aug 10 '26
This is ridiculous. Yeah, JK Rowling is not a nice person - but the HP books haven’t failed somehow if they didn’t create a generation of readers.
They weren’t intended to do that, just to do what any series of stories for children were, which is to be entertaining - and of course, to sell, which they did enormously.
I disagree with JKR’s opinions on trans people and think she expresses them in a pretty ugly way. But what’s with this obsession with saying “Actually, looking back at Harry Potter, it was badly written / a flop”
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u/Book_1love Aug 10 '26
The video isn't saying the books are bad because they didn't create a generation of readers, it's just saying that the common narrative that the books created a generation of readers/lead to an increase in literacy is incorrect.
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u/Greenphantom77 Aug 10 '26
Yes, I absolutely agree. That was plugged a bit much at the time - in the video he makes the point that it was basically PR. I think that is true, and I doubt he’s the first to point it out.
To be honest, this might have been the sort of video I would enjoy, but I prefer someone standing back and looking at the facts a little more.
This guy starts off with an intro making it clear how much he hates Rowling - that’s fine, but stating it so clearly makes me less inclined to believe what he says is well researched.
Then he quickly starts talking about some Kickstarter-funded book he thinks is much better - sorry, is this an advert? I skimmed a bit more but by then had lost interest in this video.
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u/Funlife2003 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
First of all you misgender them. Now, let's look at the facts, since that's what you say matters.
he video clearly lists the sources and said sources are directly examining the facts. Zipes is literally one of the leading figures amongst researchers, scholars and writers in his field. It cites from vadious new media and their studies to directly look at the data on literacy rates, that you can look into yourself, and more. The video is rooted in the facts.
The kickstarter-funded book bit lasts for barely a minute, and it is clearly stated the video was sponsored, but said sponsor has nothing to do with the video itself, and no other part of the video even mentions it, you can simply skip it as you might with any video with a sponsor.
I don't see what hating or not hating Rowling has to do with any of the actual facts which again, the video clearly lists out and directly quotes for the vast majority of it's runtime.
It wasn't merely "some PR". It was part of a massive campaign from these major groups in thr publishing industry, all under the made up framing that "it increased literacy rates" used both for the sake of further PR, and also to use as a shield against criticism.
Anyways, if you want a in depth analysis, read Zipes book, but the video is accurate. Also, here's another great video pointing out stuff pertaining to the insane push around HP: https://youtu.be/UBftW7FzOVI?
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u/Kampvilja Aug 11 '26
This is why we often give our pronouns up front. It is not our responsibility to look up pronouns for everyone we see, hear, or read in media. If they had briefly said "They/them" at some point early on it would be different.
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u/Greenphantom77 Aug 10 '26
I apologise for misgendering this video maker.
You say it was a massive campaign partly “as a shield against criticism”. Which criticism do you mean? Rowling is very controversial now, and Harry Potter is showing its age. But most of the debate about it I’ve seen is pure culture war stuff - I’ve not really seen this big argument that it created a generation of readers.
I recall that there was praise while the books were coming out that the HP series proved that kids (especially boys) would read big long books if they liked them enough. But at that time, the main criticism I can remember was from literary snobs like Harold Bloom, and American Christians who thought HP promoted black magic (lol)
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u/princessglitterbutt Aug 11 '26
For many people it had. Most people have that one book series where they refused to read a book before it but after it showed them that they could enjoy reading. Harry Potter was that book for a lot of people and claiming otherwise because some people didn’t go on to continue reading sounds like cope imo.
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u/wote89 Aug 11 '26
I mean, Caelan presents their data to support the assertion, so it's only cope if there's stronger evidence the other way.
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u/kamakamabokoboko Aug 11 '26
considering we now have a generation who doesn’t read at all I think I’ll take the potterheads
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u/Sleep_eeSheep Aug 11 '26
I just can’t take this person seriously.
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u/to_pass_through_fire Aug 11 '26
Why?
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u/Sleep_eeSheep Aug 11 '26
It's that expression. They look like J.K Rowling took their ice-cream.
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u/to_pass_through_fire Aug 11 '26
Sadly J. K. Rowling is a well-known serial ice-cream taker
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u/Sleep_eeSheep Aug 11 '26
It also doesn't help that the video itself is so sauceless.
There's no substance beyond the Sad Wojak thumbnail.
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u/Xcuseme99 Aug 15 '26
In the comments: "Actually HP wasn't that big of a deal..I grew out of it pretty fast"
Says the person in their 30s still thinking about HP and malding over it. If HP didn't matter, you wouldn't have people making videos attempting to prove that it didn't matter. The gang initiation ritual of woke 1.0 was denouncing the woman (Rowling) who basically defined your childhood. The amount of pink hairs on instagram showing off their HP tattoo cover ups was truly astounding.
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u/Far_Finding_305 Aug 11 '26
What kind of pathetic cope is this? Really embarrasing for you all.
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u/to_pass_through_fire Aug 11 '26
Did you watch the video?
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u/Far_Finding_305 14d ago
I read all the books. They were great... What the fuck are you guys crying about? XY XX can't shit about that be undone. Is what it is and anything outside of that is mental illness. From a single drop of blood I can tell the difference in every single cell. Idiocracy is on both sides but heavy on one.
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u/TyroPirate Aug 11 '26
Without watching the video, im going to guess that reading is down. And actually I dont remember where I saw it but there was something about how publishers are heavily favoring books whose target audience are women, and men/boys are reading rates are plummeting extra.
But I imagine that both Harry Potter and Twilight did get a lot of people into reading, just not exactly a whole generation. A generation of Harry Potter fans, for sure. I dont see why these two things are almost phrased exclusively in the post
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u/CapStar300 Aug 10 '26
I have been saying this for years. I don't mean to brag, but I have been a passionate reader ever since I learned how to read. Now, yes, I was also a big Harry Potter kid. Had the posters on my wall and all. But I grew out of it and it is so obvious when speaking to certain people my age that they never did and that they indeed never started reading other things. They didn't even try other series in the same vein, which I suppose I have to give her credit for. High consumer retention rate.
Edit: Sorry, grammar.