Literature-Based Instruction for Middle School Readers: Harry Potter and More

ALAN Review, Spring 2003 by Carroll, Pamela Sissi, Gregg, Gail P

The Research Connection

The most basic educational skill is reading. The most basic obligation of any school is to teach reading. Yet, earlier this year, we found that almost two-thirds of African American children in the 4th grade cannot read at basic grade level. For white children, that figure is 27 percent. The gap is wide and troubling, and it's not getting any better. That gap leads to personal tragedy and social injustice. In America, literacy is liberation, and we must set all our children free.

(President George W. Bush, speech to 2001 National Urban League Conference, August 1, 2001).

Above all, make this the golden rule, the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath: everything we ask a child to do should be worth doing.

(Award-winning writer Philip Pullman, from the Isis Lecture given during the Oxford Literary Festival, Oxford University, England, April 1, 2003.)

Personal knowledge, knowledge based in one's own experience and practice, is an irreplaceable source of wisdom....But personal knowledge is also a limited source of wisdom...It must be compared to knowledge from other sources, connected with knowledge based in research, and interwoven with knowledge derived from a theoretical perspective to be made useful.

(Catherine Snow, literacy researcher, in her address as President of the American Educational Research Association, 2001, p. 8)

I like to read because when you read, you are in a world of you. With movies you don't get to live in a world of you.

(Female middle school student, age 12, discussing her view of literary experiences, 2000.)

In today's educational environment, attention has turned from a concentration on the art of literature to a narrow focus on the skills of reading. Many of the teachers of middle and high school English language arts with whom we work are concerned that they have little specific knowledge about how to teach reading skills. These teachers' concerns are tinted with anxieties that arise when their students' reading scores on standardized tests are scrutinized by school boards, students' parents, community members, local newspapers, and politicians. Their concerns are also laced with fears that time devoted to reading instruction will necessarily steal time from the major components of contemporary secondary English language arts curriculum: literature, composition, language, and media studies.

These are legitimate concerns about significant problems related to the need for reading instruction in today's secondary schools. But we have good news: middle school teachers can find ways to use literature that appeals to students' interests while emphasizing the development of critical reading skills. Middle school students themselves have pointed us toward solutions.

Books That Appeal to Today's Young Adolescent Readers Harry Potter's Footprints

In the year 2000, we surveyed secondary school students, interested in how they would describe themselves as readers at the turn of the 21st century. Responses - 2,070 of them -poured in from middle school students from Washington and Oregon, Arizona and North Dakota, Wisconsin and Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky, Connecticut, New York, and Florida. Among other questions, we asked them, "What is your favorite book?" and "Why?" The overwhelming response to the first question, across 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, and among both male and female readers, was one of the Harry Potter titles. That response was no real surprise. With the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1998), the young wizard's name became part of the lexicon of today's young adolescent. The popularity of the Harry Potter books- each of which is quite long by young adult novel standards, and each of which has unusual names and unfamiliar settings that increase the chances that readers will have some difficulty moving through the pages - attests to the fact that kids are willing to work to read books they like. Adolescent readers who are interested in the wizard will find ways to get inside Harry's magical world. The attraction of the books continues to grow, and is enhanced by the movie versions of the first two books of the series; the feature film version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was released by Warner in 2001, and the feature film version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was released in 2003. The June, 2003, publication of the much-anticipated fifth novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, will create a new wave of enthusiasm and publicity for Harry.

The positive impact that the young wizard has had on encouraging young adolescents to read is undeniable. Author T.A. Barron, who himself has a fine series of novels that chronicle the early life of another famous wizard, Merlin, acknowledges Rowling's gift to readers: "All of us who write books for young people are grateful to Harry Potter. He has reminded a lot of people, of all ages, just how much fun reading books can be!" (Carroll with Barron, 23).

Young adolescents themselves provide persuasive and informative explanations of the Harry Potter phenomenon for themselves. Eighth grade males told us the following about why they like the Harry Potter books: