I recently came across an article on Mugglenet, the top Harry Potter fansite, about an English professor at Washington and Lee University who thanks J.K. Rowling for getting college students to appreciate Charles Dickens again. The professor writes about teaching her students Dickens’ novels and how today’s generation of college students have a greater appreciation and understanding than those who didn’t grow up reading the Harry Potter books.

“I think it is not now standard to teach Dickens in secondary school, as it once was,” she said. “About six or seven years ago, I taught a long Dickens novel, Little Dorrit, in a course on the novel, and the students had a hard time with it. They had a hard time following the plot. They did not enjoy it. They did not find it funny.”

However, she found that today’s college students enjoy and appreciate Dickens more than previous students. She attributes it to the Harry Potter books being “a crash course in reading Dickens.” She also notes that there is a different attitude toward reading for pleasure among her students today.

“They like to read. They like long books. They talk about books. If you’re willing to meet them where they are and talk to them about what they’re actually reading, there are a lot more kids in this younger generations of college students who are pleasure readers. Any time you have a whole bunch of pleasure readers, then an English professor is happy.”

The Harry Potter series definitely helped make reading cool again. It’s the first book series of the Millenium generation where people anxiously awaited the next book in the series to be released.  And, although I wouldn’t attribute my love of reading to the Harry Potter series, I can see the parallels with Dickens that Professor Keen points out.  Harry Potter is certainly a stepping stone to other great literary works.