I was twelve when the first Harry Potter came out.
That's right: twelve.
And I was SO disappointed that I never got my Hogwarts letter. I kept checking my window, hoping that maybe the owl was delayed or had gotten lost and that my letter to the famous school of wizards was on its way. (Never mind that I live in the U.S. and using an owl to fly from Britain to Arkansas would be a form of animal cruelty.) I was seriously obsessed with this book. It opened a whole new world for me. A special world where magic and flying broomsticks secretly existed beside parking meters and burger joints. Looking back on how obsessed I was with these books (and still am obsessed to some degree) I can understand why some parents might flip out.
It's sort of the same thing with Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. It's often misconstrued as a gateway for evil and an encouragement for murder (where they get the connection that rolling dice and slaying dragons equals a desire to pick up a gun and blow your neighbor away...I have no idea). Growing up in the Bible Belt, I dealt with a lot of narrow-mindedness when it came to ANYTHING dealing with magic. I had friends who weren't allowed to watch Beauty and the Beast because the dishes were "possessed." Seriously. So when Harry Potter came out and started a literary fire, I remember all the church officials marching up to my school and demanding that such unholy filth be removed from the reach of innocents.
Nope. Not kidding.
Now, even though I was obsessed (maybe even unhealthily obsessed) with Harry Potter, there are some things a twelve year old understands immediately when she opens a book.
1. It's a book. Therefore, no matter how real the characters/situations feel, it's NOT real.
2. There's a difference between a satanic how-to and a story. Harry Potter is definitely not the former. (Though maybe if you highlight every fourth word every three paragraphs... Nope, gibberish.)
3. Reading a story (or even an instructional how-to) does not mean that you will start a cultish following and start waving wands at people and shouting "Expelliarmus!"
My thoughts? While some people forge into the unknown without a second thought, that same uncertainty scares the beejeezus out of others. Banned books are really about people being afraid; afraid of magic, the Devil or even immorality. And they think that books are powerful tools in conveying such dastardly ideas. But what they don't understand is that even a twelve year old--heck, even an eleven year old--can take what they want from a story and leave the rest.
What I thought was hilarious? At the time they were fighting to keep Harry Potter out of the schools, I discovered a lesbian erotica in the school's library. But there wasn't any magic in it...so I guess it's more appropriate for junior high kids than Harry Potter. ;)
Note: Yes, I was going to do Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings but I haven't had the time or the energy to get to the library. I highly recommend it, however.
Haha.
ReplyDeleteI remember a customer (back at my non-bookstore retail job days) telling me one time that she refused to let her four year old watch the HP movie because it had magic and magic was evil. Now she was right to not let her child watch it, but not for those reasons. My son is now 5 and I still won't let him watch it because of his age. If she'd actually read the book all the way through and paid attention to what characters were doing rather than their tools themselves, she would have seen that Harry was learning about friendship, trust, and compassion. Hardly a work of evil.
Right-o. And you're right about not letting your kid watch it...there's some scary stuff in that movie. :)
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