As one who grew up with reading Tolkien, I can say that The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings helped to instill a love of reading that I continue to this day for those were among the first books I picked up to read "just for fun" as opposed to being made to read a boring classic assigned by a teacher. In fact, I later came to appreciate many of the classics that the teachers force-fed me as a kid as a result of all my independent reading, of which Tolkien played a key role.
Before Harry Potter came on the scene, it was even a worse situation with the current generation. Many children couldn't even read Tolkien even if they wanted to because they were too difficult for the average child to get through. I tried getting my kids to read The Hobbit when they were young but they found the book ridiculously long and boring. Even though Hobbit wasn't that long (compared to LOTR), the average children's book rarely exceeded 100 pages. Harry Potter changed all that. I believe the 5th Harry Potter book had close to 900 pages! Never again will my kids look at a thick book and be intimidated.
Fans of Tolkien's work today don't realize that Tolkien wrote those books for children. Back in the 1950s, your average 6th grader could read LOTR with no problem. Today, many high school kids are intimidated by it!
So if the Harry Potter series can get kids reading again, I'm all for it. Since my two sons started reading the Potter books, they have been much more open to reading other books that they never otherwise would have even attempted.
You know, when I was in high school, I gobbled up Tolkien and just about any E. R. Burroughs story I could lay my hands on. I tried rereading both series not that long ago, and I found the prose to be stultifyingly thick. I may have killed far too many brain cells in the past couple of decades...