Game Changers: Harry Potter made reading cool

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HARRY POTTER: June 26, 1997.

HOW OLD ARE YOU NOW: 20. 

Reading is called an activity. But in truth, it's more passive than active.

It's silent. It's solitary. It involves sitting still for long periods. It has none of the excitement of a celebrity rock concert, an IMAX movie, or extreme bungee jumping. And young people who like it, often termed "bookish" or "bookworms," are definitely not the cool kids.

Not, at least, until June 26, 1997 — when Harry Potter rocked the library.

What "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" ("Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in the U.S.) and its 7 sequels did, when author J.K. Rowling introduced the franchise 20 years ago this month, was to put reading on steroids.

Readers, far from being lone wolves, were now part of an enormous, worldwide mob that descended on local libraries or waited online for hours at bookstores — counting down the minutes to the release of the latest "Harry Potter" title, as it if were a Katy Perry concert or a summer blockbuster.

Harry Potter brought reading into the pop culture mainstream. It was a communal thing. People discussed Harry in groups, or argued about him online. Schools incorporated Harry Potter into their curriculum. Libraries hosted special Harry Potter events, in which the boy wizard, his pals Hermione and Ron and Hagrid and Dumbledore, and the magical Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were spun off into all kinds of activities.

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Game Changers is an ongoing series about the turning points in pop culture

"We had programs on making wands, and crafts like screaming mandrakes," says Robin Rockman, youth services librarian at Oradell Public Library. "There was one where we were learning spells, and the children dueled one another."

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The hit series of "Harry Potter" movies, beginning in 2001, had something to do with all this, of course. But it's not like these movies "popularized" the books. They were already popular. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is the fifth top-selling book of all time (107 million copies). Altogether, the books have sold $7.7 billion. The Harry Potter franchise itself — books, movies, toys, theme parks and all — is said to be worth $25 billion.

"I don't really think there are a lot of authors out there that get that kind of reaction," says Michelle Gersh, store manager Books and Greetings bookstore in Northvale.

A whole subgenre of music, called "Wizard Rock" or sometimes "Wrock," was inspired by the Harry Potter phenomenon: bands with names like The Luna Lovegoods, The Hagrids, The Mudbloods, The Dementors, The Sirius Black Attack, Lord Voldemort and Harry and the Potters.

"I think that's awesome,"  Rockman says. "Anything that brings books and the joy and fun of reading to life is a wonderful thing."

It's often been said that Harry Potter turned an entire generation on to reading. That's been disputed.

A study cited by the British newspaper The Guardian in 2005 found that 59 percent of children felt that the "Potter" books had improved their reading skills, and half said that the series made them want to read more. A 2007 piece in The New York Times, however, noted a study by the National Assessment of Education Progress which concluded that pleasure reading by kids fell off from 43 percent in fourth grade to 19 percent in the eighth grade in 1998, and that those numbers were identical in 2005, when the sixth "Potter" book was published. 

Speaking anecdotally, however, almost everyone knows a child who found the "Potter" series to be the gateway drug to a lifetime reading habit.

"You know how everybody gets in line to go to a concert?  We would be waiting on line for the book," says Brenda Valladares of Cliffside Park. "Usually the book wouldn't be released until midnight. My mom would take us there at 7."

Valladeres, 26, grew up with Harry Potter — literally. She's exactly Potter's age. "I was 11 when he was 11," she says.

As each book came out, she — like millions of others — devoured it. And as an adult, deciding on a career, she again found inspiration in Harry Potter. She's now an assistant librarian at the Fort Lee Pubic Library, and frequently works in the children's room.

"I can personally say it affected my love of reading, and my desire to work in a library," she says.

With all that, Harry Potter's success in America is still a little mysterious. Especially when you consider what a very British character he is.

Probably few Americans recognize the origins of Harry Potter in that quintessential English phenomenon: the "school story." 

For a century or more, English kids daydreamed of becoming schoolboys at a posh public school (what we would call a private school), the way American kids fantasized about being cowboys.

"Tom Brown's Schooldays" (1857), "Stalky & Co." (1899), and the "Molesworth" books (1950s) were all part of this vogue, but probably the outstanding specimens were The Gem and The Magnet — two popular boys' magazines that had a huge circulation in the United Kingdom between 1908 and 1940 and created a "Harry Wharton" fever similar to today's Harry Potter fever. 

The main characters at "Greyfriars School" — hero Wharton, Billy Bunter, Tom Merry, Bob Cherry, the "bad boys" Racke, Crooke and Loder — were known "wherever the Union Jack waves," as George Orwell wrote in his landmark study "Boys' Weeklies." 

"Like Harry P., Harry Wharton in the early stories had to work hard to prove himself," said Bill Nagelkerke, creator of a Web site dedicated to "Greyfriar's" author Charles Hamilton (he spoke to The Record in 2007).

"He has to withstand attacks and plots against him from rival schoolboys," Nagelkerke said. "He eventually gained high status within his 'house' and became a leader rather than a follower. All without magical powers!" 

The school stories, Orwell noted, were mostly read by working-class kids who wanted to fantasize themselves into an upper-class environment. Their outlook was essentially snobbish and conservative. "In reality, their basic political assumptions are two," Orwell wrote. "Nothing ever changes, and foreigners are funny."

The Harry Potter books added magic to the formula, turned the cricket into Quidditch — and thereby launched a juggernaut. But Rowling also added something else: a distinctly non-conformist, anti-authoritarian strain that has made some parents (especially some conservative Christians) uncomfortable.

At Hogwarts, some adults in power are actually bad people. Snobs like Draco Malfoy who disdain "mudbloods" — magical half-breeds — are actually in league with the arch-villain, Voldemort. And some creatures of strange appearance and odd habits are actually good guys.

A study called "The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice," which appeared in "Journal of Applied Social Psychology," found that some fifth graders who read "Potter" indicated markedly less prejudice towards immigrants, homosexuals, and other minorities than their non-Potter-reading counterparts.

"I think Harry Potter is a positive character," Rockman says. "He embraces Hagrid, and Luna Lovegood, who is a little quirky. He finds the good in people."