Harry Potter & Co.

It is good that young people like to read the Harry Potter books and that young adults like to read the Twilight and Hunger Games books. Anything that gets people to discover the joys of reading a book in this audio-visual-loving day and age is a blessing in my opinion. Even reading an eBook is better than mindlessly flipping channels.

But will fans of say, The Hunger Games move on and discover Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451? Will fans of Twilight move on to Nosferatu? Or is their reading bug confined solely to the series of books they started with? 

Whether or not they do, the Harry Potter series, at least, has garnered some praise for how the books have introduced kids to reading at new levels.  The author of this article at Reading Rockets, for example, points out how the Potter books inspire young readers to tackle a book technically above their reading level in their quest to read all about Harry.   That is very good, and hopefully will instill in each and every Potter fan a love of reading, even if it is just the works of J.K. Rowling.

However, if there are young Potter fans out there in search of other books of the same vein, this article at WiseGeek lists some authors such as Ronald Dahl, whose works featuring magical worlds might just be the ticket for them. It would also broaden their literary horizons in the bargain.

On the flip side of the coin, the Twilight series has been damned with faint praise for both its writing and plot. And yet the paranormal romance genre seems to be rolling on and on with many imitators cashing in on the Twilight phenomenon. Well, if one wants to read a genre that has become a big cash cow, more power to them.    

But enough with my opinions;  in closing, I invite young readers to share their opinions on their favorite books and why they like to read them.

Article image courtesy Hennepin County Library.