Reading
I just read this article in our local paper’s living section about Reading (see below this entry). I thought from the title it would be different (no worries about spoilers here) but it stated some things well and succintly and I wanted to share these thoughts with you all. Everyone who knows me knows I love to read. It is a skill, as well as a past-time, I hope to continue to instill in my children. (read it now before reading more here)
As to Harry Potter, I’ve read all the books (reread them all in fact over the past two weeks - yes all of them - plus the new one) and yes I know how it ends (it’s over - waaah!) and I hope to reread #7 again soon since there are still some things I’m figuring out (I even reread pieces of 6 yet again after finishing 7 to better understand a few finer points and I’m hungry to reread more but I’ve spend enough time on this already) . Don’t ask me questions if you don’t want any spoilers as there’s no way to discuss it without giving things away.
And no, I’ve never seen even one of the movies - no real desire to honestly. Why? What makes having actually been there to see your child’s first step better than watching it on a video? What makes seeing a sunset more breathtaking than looking at a picture of it? What makes a face to face conversation more to be desired than talking on the telephone? Ideas, thoughts, concepts that words attempt to convey… we are idea people here in our house I guess. Maybe someday I will watch the movies but I have no desire to, honestly. I’m sure there is no way any movie or series of movies can do these books or Rowling’s ideas and creativity justice, let alone include even a third of the content. Yeah, they’ll cover the main points but few of the connectors - there’s just not enough time. And it’s the connectors - the rich, vivid, intricate, well-thought out character development, word pictures and sideplots, that make these books such wonderful reading.
My mind prefers the leisure to mull and reflect and ponder and go with the words wherever she’s taking me and along my own side tracks - and the ideas are so deep and the word pictures so vivid and everything so well woven. I’ve got all sorts of neat “connections” and illustrations from what I’ve read. As an example, it struck me during Sunday’s sermon, that when we’re enslaved to sin, it’s kind of like being under the Imperius Curse. We can’t obey no matter how much we try because sin is our master, until we are saved(freed from the power of sin - ref Rom 7 and many others) and Christ is our master. Of course it’s not a perfect analogy but I liked the connection - made the imperius curse much more vivid to me in terms of how it looked and affected those in the stories (again a movie could never do that justice). Maybe I’ll share more of them someday but right now I’ll need to be careful b/c I don’t want to spoil it for anyone - like my sister-in-law 
- by saying too much.
So rather than watching the movies, I’ll just go read the books again when I next have a week or two of my life to spare for several thousand pages of fine literature. Oh yes, and Betsy-Tacy and others by Maud Hart Lovelace, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Anne of Green Gables, and the Little House books, and Wives and Daughters, and the Castle in the Attic, and Babar, and Uncle Wiggily, and novels by Jane Austen and Andrew Clements, and (non-fiction) books by Sally Clarkson and Angela Thomas, and Philip Yancey’s “What’s so Amazing about Grace” and Haggai and Ecclesiastes and Galatians and so much more. Ahhh yes . . . . reading. My favorite thing to do.
The article:
Jump Cut: Can ‘Harry Potter’ form foundation to advance reading?
By Jay Craven
Free Press Columnist
August 1, 2007
Harry Potter mania is in full bloom. The final installment, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” sold a record-breaking 11 million copies in its first 24 hours. Children everywhere are deeply engrossed in Potter’s epic showdown with the dark forces of Lord Voldemort.
Why have the Harry Potter books so completely captured the imaginations of young people? Now that J.K. Rowling’s blockbuster series has concluded, what might take its place? And what impact will all this reading have on young peoples’ long-term habits?
During a recent discussion on the PBS “New Hour,” National Endowment for the Arts Chairman and poet Dana Gioia explained how he read the first four books to his sons, who now read them on their own.
“I think Harry Potter’s appeal to boys is that they’re full of action; they’re full of magic; and they’re full of adventure, which are things that are often forgotten in the books that boys are assigned in school,” Gioia said. Also unique, he said, is how “the characters age as the readers age, and as the level of the difficulty of the books increases with the age of the readers.”
Of course, the Harry Potter series also appeals to girls. And Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl offered her further thoughts, also on the “News Hour.” “I don’t know of another series that was timed so wonderfully that, as the books grew darker and more complex, the readers were able, more able to really get into that complexity and appreciate that titanic struggle between good and evil.”
The books are challenging, engaging kids with their detailed descriptions and complex plots and characterizations.
In 2002, The National Endowment for the Arts issued a startling report, “Reading at Risk,” that documented steep declines in reading among all age groups. Among the findings:
Fewer than half of American adults read literature;
20 million fewer adults read literature today, compared with 20 years ago;
Reading among the youngest age groups shows the steepest decline, dropping 28 percent during the period studied;
The rate of decline is accelerating and, according to the survey, has nearly tripled during the last decade;
Women read more than men do, but literary reading by both genders is declining;
Only slightly more than one-third of adult males now read literature;
The rate of decline among young adults, aged 18 to 24, is 55 percent higher than that of the total adult population.
“This report documents a national crisis,” Gioia said at the time of its release. “Reading develops a capacity for focused attention and imaginative growth that enriches both private and public life.”
In his recent PBS interview Gioia went further. “Because people read less, they read less well; because they read less well, they do less well in school and less well in the job market. Interestingly, because they read less well, they participate in their communities less.”
The Harry Potter phenomenon can help to reverse declines in young peoples’ reading, but only if schools, parents and librarians take the time to understand the appeal of the series and find other books that will excite kids. Media can help, as they have done to popularize the Harry Potter series.
It’s also vital that adults read to children, even into their teen-aged years. Families with reading traditions spawn readers into the next generation. And studies show that reading to even our youngest infants expands their brain capacities in ways that nothing else can.
The ubiquitous presence of electronic media is, of course, one reason for the decline in reading. I-Pods, CDs, DVDs, cable TV, video games, MySpace and the worldwide Web are everywhere. It’s easy to burn up time and be overwhelmed by too much information without ever touching a book.
Literature, however, is beneficial for precisely the ways in which it differs from electronic media. It causes us to make pictures in our own minds, a natural brain phenomenon that is inhibited by TV viewing, according to studies. Reading enhances our knowledge and use of language. We develop creative instincts, complex understandings, empathy and imaginative capacities that serve us in hundreds of ways. When we read a book, we probe more deeply into a story’s ideas, themes and metaphors than we do by watching a movie.
The North Country enjoys an array of fine bookstores and libraries that provide keys to worlds beyond anything we’ve ever known. Let’s use the unprecedented example of kids’ immersion into the world of Harry Potter to re-dedicate ourselves to the riches that only literature can provide.
Filmmaker Jay Craven teaches at Marlboro College and directs Kingdom County Productions in Peacham.
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I’m curious - has Emily shown an interest in reading your Harry Potter books? We have a kid in the neighborhood in same age as Emily and he’s also a big reader as she is. He’s been very interested in Harry Potter.
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:03 pm
We believe that some literature is better if you wait until you’re able to actually understand it. Emily’s reading level would allow her to read Harry Potter, but I think most of it would go over her head, not to mention that it’s got some deep “good vs. evil” in it and I think too much so for an impressionable child her age. We’ve told her we would encourage her to read it when she’s a little older, and is in our opinion more able to appreciate it and also much less likely to miss most of what makes it good reading. I think Tolkien was lost on me because I read him too young and I don’t want that to happen here with Emily (or the other kids). I feel the same way about some of the themes in the Betsy Tacy books we were reading together. Once Betsy hit high-school, I thought the books were just no longer appropriate for her. What does she understand of high school social life and relationships and all that? Not much. So while there was nothing “wrong” with her continuing to read with me, we opted to suggest she wait until she’s a bit older, again so that she can appreciate them. She’s very happy to do so, for which we’re thankful! Let her enjoy stories actually aimed at kids her age for now. No point in growing up any more quickly than is needed - it’s fast enough already.