I dunno. I read Biggles as a kid, and soon read every book of W. E. Johns that I could. But eventually I passed on to other things. Biggles, too, never said anything without a modifying adverb. As a father I read on the bed, too, but that passed as my kids learned to read their own stuff, and go off into their own imaginative world. They've got to learn on something. I hope Biggles didn't do me any permanent harm.

But three years of an English major at university deprived me of any joy in the classics of English literature. I was 40 before I could read such a book for pleasure.

For what it's worth I read the first HP novel, there being such a lot of fuss about it, and decided easily enough that one would be enough.

Helen Pringle

What a miserable person you must be. You haven't told us what you read as a young
child - perhaps that would be enlightening.

Because a child reads Harry Potter it does not mean that this is going to be the sole reading for the child's life. They move on. And if Harry Potter gives them the desire
to pick up a book and read, then the series has achieved something. I don't really see
a seven year old enjoying the Pickwick Papers, but certainly later as the child matures
they could well be drawn to it as to other greater classics.

Oh dear - this article reminds me why I abandoned English at uni before it destroyed my love of reading.

HP is a ripping yarn - not particularly well written, and it seems the last three books weren't edited at all, but JK Rowling has an astouning imagination, tells a good tale and can certainly weave a very inticate plot into a coherent whole. In my experience, very few children can or will read a HP book in a day - but they keep at it enthusiastically until thy have finished. I read the early ones to my daughter (HP and reading to children are not mutually exclusive), she has also listened to some read by Stephen Fry and has read the last three herself - fairly slowly. Well, she hasn't quite finished HP7 - it was confiscated at school along with about 15 other copies which had been smuggled into class! Kids love the story, and if they are the young reader's equivalent of an airport novel, so what? Better than the Triple D's (drugs, death and divorce) which infest so much of the 'literature' teens are meant to read these days.

An oblique comment.
I wonder what Plato would have thought of the practice of putting babies (even new born ones), toddlers and infants in front of a TV set as either a form of entertainment (ENTRAINMENT) or baby sitting?

Or letting young people of all ages spend several hours a day either watching TV or a computer screen?

Helen, have you read any of the books yourself? Some? All? One? A chapter?

The reason I ask is that you carefully avoid any hint that you might have an opinion of your own about their style.

>>Even if my readers allow that the Harry Potter books are written in a dull and cliché-ridden style...<<

>>It is sometimes said that even if the Harry Potter books are written badly, nevertheless ...<<

Significantly, you didn't say "I found the style dull and cliché-ridden" or "I found them badly written".

So, who exactly it is that holds the opinions that you parrot?

I was fed tripe as a kid. Enid Blyton was repetitive and cartoonish, with the naffest of naff characters. W E Johns' Biggles, Ginger and Algy were clichéd in the extreme, but fearless and honourable. Arthur Ransome wrote about kids who seemed to own both boats and real estate, perhaps a tad out of touch in the Depression. And post-war England, come to that. Antony Buckeridge wrote about kids who went to boarding school and had "tuck boxes" sent from home - as of course did Frank Richards' Bunter, whose entourage I can still recall included the stock-mock Indian, Hurree Jamset Ram Singh.

The language and tone used ranged from ultra-juvenile to out-of-touch patrician. I didn't notice this at the time, of course, but it is significant that none can be read by an adult without cringing.

When the first Harry Potter book came out, my son was of read-to-at-bedtime age, and it was very noticeable that Rowling's prose was far easier going that any of the above. It was actually fun to read out loud.

Despite their shortcomings, I lapped up all the available garbage as a kid, and in adolescence managed to move seamlessly through Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming and Agatha Christie into Dostoevsky, Sartre and Austen. I strongly suspect that growing up with J K Rowling will do my lad no harm at all.

But I never liked Wind in the Willows. Or Dickens, come to that.

Hated Dickens. Such a pompous ass.

Those that can, do; those that can't, teach. Sophie Masson clearly falls into the first class, while Helen Pringle falls into the second. It also seems that doers can respect and admire other doers, while teachers churlishly denigrate those doers who challenge taught dogma.