Harry Potter Makes Us Smart!

Lupin and Tonks, by kiwikewte,

available at deviantart.com

I had an interesting discussion with a fellow educator today. I was expressing my happiness that it was nearly July and I would be able to read the last Harry Potter book (please don't kill Lupin!). This lovely woman rolled her eyes. I asked her why my reading habits should make her so aghast, and she informed me that it wasn't me, it was the students. She is apparently a seventh grade language arts teacher, and she is not happy with Harry Potter. She disapproves of her students reading Harry Potter (and Twilight and Eragon) because she feels they should be reading the "classics."

So I, ever the protagonist, asked her what "classics" these seventh graders should be reading instead of the fantasy novels we were discussing. She suggested The Call of the Wild, Beloved, Don Quixote, Crime and Punishment, The Stranger, and well, there were more, but when she started listing existential literature I stopped paying attention. I agree that [most of] these books are good to have read, but at age 13?

I do not understand why it is better to read a book that you are too young to enjoy than it is to read one that is on level that still makes you think. I have students ask me all the time what words out of these fantasy books mean. They want to talk about what happened and what is going to happen. They are building their vocabulary and their intuition skills. Because, after all, don't we just want to know who dies?

This teacher said one thing in parting, "Don't get me started on Lemony Snicket." I nearly fell over. When I first started reading the series, it was simply to keep up with my students. Then I became hooked. These books use a high level vocabulary that, through the narrator's style, gets taught and not just used! Also, the books always deal with complex themes that are rarely seen in young adult literature. The final book The End, had a theme of the conflict that exists between a desire for knowledge and a desire for protection. Not to mention it had one of the most poignant, sophisticated ending I have had the pleasure of reading (I won't give it away).

Am I the only one that thinks these books are worth reading, even as "adults?" Do they really have no place with the "real" literature?