Potter v.s Reading Habbits

It's 5 o'clock on Friday morning. I cannot believe that I woke up so early and therefore immedietely embeded myself into reading. I slept very shallow and little last night, I don't know why. Today is just the 7th day since I have the RDG688 of summer 2. It's about time to write a journal to meet professor's request.

Newspaper. Coffee. They are the best friends of morning.

I clicked on "education" of The New York Times and this news jumped into my vision: "Potter Has Limited Effect on Reading Habits"

Really? I thought many people would agree with that Harry Potter is a successful series of books and so many teenagers bewitched by it. Certainlly, this series of books not only improve the reading ability but also enhence their imagination and creativity. However, “And in way too many American classrooms it’s not happening.” some educators still feel pessimistic.....

“It got millions of kids to read a long and reasonably complex series of books. The trouble is that one Harry Potter novel every few years is not enough to reverse the decline in reading.”

Educators agree that the series can’t get the job done alone.

“Unless there are scaffolds in place for kids — an enthusiastic adult saying, ‘Here’s the next one’ — it’s not going to happen,” said Nancie Atwell, the author of “The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers” and a teacher in Edgecomb, Me. “And in way too many American classrooms it’s not happening.”

Young people are less inclined to read for pleasure as they move into their teenage years for a variety of reasons, educators say. Some of these are trends of long standing (older children inevitably become more socially active, spend more time on reading-for-school or simply find other sources of entertainment other than books), and some are of more recent vintage (the multiplying menagerie of high-tech gizmos that compete for their attention, from iPods to Wii consoles). What parents and others hoped was that the phenomenal success of the Potter books would blunt these trends, perhaps even creating a generation of lifelong readers in their wake.

Many parents, educators and librarians say that despite such statistics, they have seen enough evidence to convince them that Harry Potter is a bona fide hero. (By MOTOKO RICH Published: July 11, 2007)

I don't know if this news just mean for the promotion of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” which is going to sell at 12:01 a.m. on July 21. But I had learned an idiom here: bona fide (In good faith)

Ha! Bona Fide! Good to know!