Children of the 1990s and early 2000s need no reminder of how J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series became a global phenomenon. The seven books—one each for every year that the protagonist spent at the magical boarding school known as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—and subsequently the movies based on these books, saw massive success in terms of sales, translations to other languages, and recognition of characters and plot lines around the world.
Yet, even in 2025—eighteen years after the publication of the last book in the series, fourteen years after the release of its last film, and several years after Rowling first announced her gender-critical politics—the popularity of Potter’s magical world endures. In 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery announced (and confirmed, and then reconfirmed) a ten-season series based on the book, with a few permanent cast members revealed in April 2025. With more than 600 million copies of the books sold worldwide, and everything related to them continuing to do well years after the initial release of the books, one wonders how this series remains popular despite the deluge of young adult novels (and controversy) that followed it.
In 2002, after the fourth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, smashed records, Sara Ann Beach and Elizabeth Harden Willner of the University of Oklahoma’s College of Education, asked fifth, sixth, and eighth graders across the United States to share their thoughts on the series.
These conversations and supporting research led them to surmise that
Rowling’s tale about an adolescent boy’s life in a parallel world of magic spells and fantastic creatures has captivated young and old alike. Children…who had previously not read for pleasure are standing in line at bookstores and libraries to get the next book in the series. Adults are placing advance orders on the Internet to obtain the books as soon as possible… [W]e believe that the answer is rooted in the magical world and story created by Rowling, the richness of her characters, and the respect she exhibits for her readers.
What exactly was the charm of these books which critics had written off initially as being unimaginative and derivative? According to Beach and Willner, it was the seamless connection that Rowling drew between Potter’s magical world which “transcends reality” and the mundanity of the world in which young readers live. Despite their magical abilities, Potter and his friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger faced the same problems as regular pre-teens and teens navigating life in boarding school.
Further, Rowling’s imagination came alive through the numerous magical creatures she invented and adventures she devised for Potter to embark upon. As Rowling explained on the website of the books’ US publisher, Scholastic Books, “The idea that we could have a child who escapes from the confines of the adult world and goes somewhere where he has power, both literally and metaphorically, really appealed to me.”
It isn’t only Potter and his friends that are revered by fans across the board. Beach and Willner call attention to the rich cast of supporting characters which “jolt, slither, and poof to life under Rowling’s pen…. There is a richness not always seen in fantasy writing.”
Lastly, the scholars chalk the tremendous success of the books up to Rowling’s evocative writing, which encouraged young readers to be creative while holding their attention for long periods of time. It contained humor as well as “moral and ethical considerations…which blurred the lines between good and evil.”
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To conclude their piece, however, Beach and Willner warn of the “danger of overexposure that could potentially diminish the powerful effect Rowling’s writing has had on adolescent literature.”
Emily Griesinger of the Azusa Pacific University proffers a different point of view. Griesinger compares the Potter series to that of J. R. R. Tolkien’s seminal work The Lord of the Rings and C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and clubs the depiction of what she terms “deep magic” in all three as a “narrative device that articulates hope.” She likens the practice of evoking hope in children’s literature to the eschatological beliefs in Christianity, referring to the permanent establishment of the Kingdom of God once Christ returns.
“Children’s fantasy literature is a special form of imaginative self-transcendence,” Griesinger writes,
that works in similar fashion to equip children to transcend difficult circumstances in their present lives and to hope for something better in the future. Borrowing from Bauckham and Hart, children’s fantasy literature allows children to “protest in the face of the given, to refuse to accept its limitations and lacks and unacceptable features, to reject the inevitability of the intolerable.” In short, children’s fantasy allows children to survive reality long enough to grow up and be ready to change it. In this way fairy tales and fantasy literature fit children for survival.
Griesinger’s observation nixes the possibility of the series losing popularity due to overexposure. She equates the moment when Potter must cross the barrier of platform nine-and-three-quarters at King’s Cross Station, London, to catch the Hogwarts Express with the Christian concept of “wager on transcendence.”
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“There may be no heaven and no God,” she writes. “We are commanded to take a risk, to walk or run by faith like Harry Potter until we obtain the ‘the substance of things hoped for’ (Heb 11:1).” She concludes that Harry Potter can be “interpreted as a creative narrative fantasy grounded in Christian ethics and a Christian theology of hope,” further adding to its appeal to a wide range of readers.
Rowling continues to speak out and be drawn into online battles about her views, but the controversies don’t seem to be affecting the star power behind new Potter projects. While the jury is out on the exact cause of Harry Potter’s enduring popularity, Beach and Willner highlight an important point in its favor.
“It may be that Rowling’s work is shaping the choices her young readers make about other literature,” they conclude.
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