Harry Potter Under Fire

Who's after Harry Potter? If you have kept up with your reading, you would know the complete list of evil-doers: Harry's horrible Muggle (non-magic) family including his pig of a cousin Dudley, the school bully Malfoy Draco, Professor Snape and of course, the evil wizard he-who-cannot-be-named, Voldemort. But author J.K. Rowling has a few to add to her list as of last week--parents in South Carolina, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina and Georgia.

Parents have complained that the recent rave over the Potter books is nothing more than an evil curse, a sort of black magic that has cast its spell over fourth-graders everywhere. They argue that Rowling is promoting witchery (a bonafide religion in the United States) over good old-fashioned Christianity. You see, Harry Potter is no ordinary boy. He is a wizard-in-training, and in Rowling's books, there is a whole magic world out there which he inhabits. Except, of course, when he has to go home for the holidays.

While Judy Blume has already risen to young Potter's defense, asking, "What's next, the Babysitters Club banned?" there are more practical reasons to prevent the censoring of the Rowling's tales.

First of all, kids are reading them. And we all know what reading leads to...that's right, knowledge and an aptitude for the verbal section on standardized tests. Okay, maybe kids won't find the words poltergeist, Quidditch or transfiguration on the SATs anytime soon, but the Potter books have a larger vocabulary than most of the drivel that is published for children nowadays. Compare the Harry Potter series to the last fad in children's books, that formulaic series called Goosebumps, and you'll see what I mean.

Secondly, J.K. Rowling is practically the embodiment of virtue herself. A single mother on welfare when she wrote the first Potter book, she has rapidly risen to becoming the author of three New York Times bestsellers. And she's accomplished this all through her own persistence and ingenuity. Rowling is the Horatio Alger of our Gilded Age, never mind that she's from Scotland.

Thirdly, one of Potter's best friends is an incredibly smart girl named Hermione--a far better role model than Elle Macpherson for young girls who have previously been reading schlocky teen magazines which encourage rampant self-criticism. Harry is no slouch either--he studies all the time and does well in school, he never uses violence to get back at the bully and is friends with the principal. Finally, even scrawny little Harry is a star at sports. In short, Harry and his friends are every parent's dream kids.

Frankly, I'm a little appalled that the mothers and fathers of America are anti-Potter for religious reasons. There is far less religion apparent in Potters adventures than there ever was in another acclaimed Narnia series, starting with The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. C. S. Lewis' books were a thinly veiled Christian tract where God posed as a lion named Aslan.

Those books also detailed adventures in a magic world void of parents host to unearthly creatures, real and present danger, witches and wizards (good and bad), talking animals, intoxicating drinks and magical sweets, in short all the things which parents have objected to in Rowling's novels. Yet Lewis' books have gone down as one of the great children's series of all time, not to mention surreptitiously inculcating children of all ages with the tenets of the Christian faith.

In any case, odds are that the only thing that could kill Potter now would be some rapid dive in popularity due to an American knock-off. Until then, I'll be waiting in line for the next book, unless I get one from Santa Claus.

--Meredith B. Osborn