The Harry Potter craze has been hailed by parents and educators on both sides of the Atlantic as a sign that children of the information age can still be engaged by good, old-fashioned books. But are the books really the classics of children’s literature that they are constantly made out to be? Robert McCrum thinks not. “When the current generation of Harry Potter readers has grown up, it will look back on the Harry Potter phenomenon with a mixed thrill of intense nostalgia, embarrassment and dismay. Our children’s children will certainly read these books, but as curiosities, bizarre literary relics from a lost world.”