Children and Adults

Abstract

Perhaps the Harry Potter phenomenon, the enormous success of the books, is not a matter of book covers and things outside readers and texts; perhaps the phenomenon is one to do squarely with texts and readers. Perhaps the books are so successful because they have received extraordinary approbation from the readers they were primarily and ostensibly directed at — children. Everything is clear and above board then: the success of the Harry Potter books proves that they are genuine articles, books that are really for children, that children actually enjoy. The scale of success might indicate that these are more genuinely books for children than other books that are produced as such. Perhaps the whole Harry Potter phenomenon devolves from a perfect match between text and intended readership, and this has to do with the books being for children and being read with pleasure by children. There is nothing more complicated about the phenomenon, everything else follows logically from that. This is the view that is unsurprisingly championed in a feature in the Advertising Age:

The popularity of Harry Potter emerged with the schoolyard chatter, not with marketing hype. Today, two-third of kids ages 8 to 18 have read at least one in author J.K. Rowling’s series of Potter books- properties that initially arrived with comparatively little of the fanfare we’ve come to associate with new book titles.