Writing Wizardry

Abstract

This final investigation begins with another family road trip, this one when my children were nine and six.¹ Seasoned travelers, they already knew to bring along good books to make the hours go by less tediously. That summer, I packed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the three of us. It was a new fantasy novel that had just begun to dominate the New York Times Bestseller List, and I thought we could read it together.²

Where parenting, playfulness, and pedagogy encounter a wizard boy and his army and lead a professor to challenge the rampant dismissal of YA novels in literate American culture.