All this time we thought the Harry Potter books were about coming of age, triumphing over adversity and eating jelly beans that taste like earwax and vomit. It turns out we have not been paying close attention. There are people out there, lots of people, who think Harry, Hermione and Ron are recruiters for Satan’s army.
Last week, a suburban Atlanta mother of four made news by asking the board of education to banish Harry and the Hogwarts gang from school libraries. She says the books are an “evil” attempt to indoctrinate kids into the Wicca religion, and foster the kind of culture that leads to atrocities like the Columbine school shootings.
Plenty of other parents, clergy and teachers worry that the J.K. Rowling series promotes an unhealthy interest in witchcraft. The books have been removed, restricted, banned and burned so many times that they rank first on the American Library Association’s list of “challenged” books from 2000-2005.
The Harry-and-Satan theory picked up steam several years ago when the satirical tabloid The Onion ran a story headlined “Harry Potter Books Spark Rise In Satanism Among Children.” (The article reported that since 1995, applicants to Satan worship had increased from 100,000 to 14 million children and young adults.) The story was excerpted in e-mail chain letters forwarded by folks who didn’t get the joke–and the next thing you knew the Internet was loaded with rebuttals by angry Wiccans, Harry Potter fans and truth-squad Web sites like snopes.com.
Naturally, this has not hurt Harry’s popularity. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week, the ALA asked readers to vote for their favorite banned titles. The Harry Potter series finished first in all three age categories–preteen, teen and adult.
Other frequently “challenged” books include literary standards such as “Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”; provocative titles such as “Heather Has Two Mommies” and “What’s Happening to My Body?”; the entire Captain Underpants series; just about anything by Judy Blume and, astonishingly, “Where’s Waldo?” (Forget Waldo. Can you find the dog sniffing a child’s behind?)
The list proves once again that one reader’s classic is another’s ticket to the dark side.
We’re not here to say what anyone’s children should read. Parents who worry that Harry will deliver their kids to the devil or encourage them to experiment with earwax and other gateway drugs are free to ban the books from their homes. Just leave them in the library for the rest of us.
