It is a small feat to get my brother to touch a book, let alone open one. In eighth grade he had to read “The Lord of the Rings” for his summer reading.
Once he stopped procrastinating and started reading we couldn’t pry the book out of his fingers. It is still one of his favorite books.
Since that time he hasn’t read much that interests him until he started reading Harry Potter during the summer. My grandmother admonished the books, saying sorcery wasn’t suitable reading. She wouldn’t even let us see the movie. I am 22 years old and I was forbidden to see a movie. That is how scared everybody is by witchcraft.
My grandmother’s reaction to Harry Potter is not unique. In fact, there are several Web sites springing up all over the Internet that disapprove of the pint-sized wizard and his friends. How can books that get kids to read be bad for them?
The debate over books such as “The Lord of the Rings” and the Chronicles of Narnia have been going on for some time now, but Harry Potter is the new nemesis of various parent and Christian organizations. Parents are worried that their children are becoming too enthralled with witchcraft and wizardry. Christians admonish the books because they feel the books don’t clearly define good magic and bad magic.
The children old enough to read Harry Potter are smart enough to know that the magic Harry practices is good, while his enemies practice “black magic.” There is no guesswork. It is pretty cut and dry.
A person reading fantasy books doesn’t have to subscribe to the dark arts, sorcery or the occult. J.K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, doesn’t even believe in the magic she writes about.
“My wizarding world is a world of the imagination,” Rowling said in an interview. “I don’t believe in the kind of magic that appears in my books, but I believe it is a moral world.”
Children are encouraged to explore and use their imaginations. Why hinder that precious gift? The gift of an imagination is very valuable. The children who read “The Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” won’t discover much about the real world of the occult, but they will discover an amazing story about a child wizard.
That is what fantasy is all about. Children will never be able to learn and grow if they cannot think outside of their reality. Sure, these books deal with issues such as evil, magic and death, but children cannot remain sheltered from these ideas.
Author Richard Abanes argues that Harry Potter is not teaching children to use their imaginations, but rather it teaches them “anti-Christian lessons on the occult, but also moral relativism and it desensitizes children to profanity and off-color humor.”
I don’t recall finding any profanity in J.K. Rowling’s books and I certainly didn’t find any off-color humor.
That is the problem with people today. They are so quick to tell you what to do and what not to do. If they announce that something contains profanity then other parents will be encouraged to steer their children from it as well. A bandwagon mentality is very dangerous and it breeds ignorance.