Judy Blume on Harry Potter

[Mary Ludwick <ludwick@swbell.net>]

Book censors even Targeting Harry Potter
                By Judy Blume

        I happened to be in London last year on the very day Harry
Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book in the wildly popular
series by J.K. Rowling, was published.  I couldn't believe my good
fortune.  I rushed to the bookstore to buy a copy, knowing this simple
act would put me up there with the best grandmas in the world.  The book
still was months away from publication in the Unites States, and I have
an 8 year-old grandson who is a big Harry Potter fan.
        It is a good thing when children enjoy books, isn't it?  Most of
us think so.  But like many children's books these days, the Harry
Potter series recently ahs come under fire.  In California, Michigan,
Minnesota, New York an south Carolina, parents who feel the books
promote interest in the occult have called for their removal from
classroom sand school libraries.
        I knew this was coming.  The only surprise is that it took so
long--as long as it took for the zealots who claim they are protecting
children from evil (and evil can be found lurking everywhere these days)
to discover that children actually like these books.  If children are
excited about a book, it must be suspect.
        I am not exactly unfamiliar with this line of thinking having
had various books of mine banned from schools during the past 20 years.
In my books, it is reality that is seen as corrupting.  With Harry
Potter, the perceived danger is fantasy.  After all, harry and his
classmates attend the celebrated Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry.  According to certain adults, these stories teach witchcraft,
sorcery and Satanism.
        But, hey, if it isn't one "ism," it is another.  I mean
Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time has been targeted by censors for
promoting New Ageism, and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
for promoting racism.  Gee, where does that leave the kids?
        The real danger isn't in the books but in laughing off those who
would ban them.  The protests against harry Potter follow a tradition
that has been growing since the early 1980s and often leaves school
principals trembling with fear that then is passed down to teachers and
librarians.
        Some parents believe they have the right to demand the immediate
removal of any book for any reason from school or classroom libraries.
The list of gifted teachers and librarians who find their jobs in
jeopardy for defending their student's right to read, to imaging and to
question grows every year.
        My grandson was bewildered when I tried to explain why some
adults don't want their children reading about Harry Potter.  "But that
doesn't make any sense!" he said.  J.K.Rowling is on a book tour in
America right now.  She probably is befuddled by the brouhaha, too.
After all, she was just trying to tell a good story.
        My husband and I like to reminisce about how, when we were 9, we
read straight through L. Frank Baum's Oz series, books filled with
wizards and witches.  And you know what those subversive tales taught
us?  That we loved to read!  In those days, I used to dream of flying.
I may have been small and powerless in real life, but in my imagination
I was able to soar.
        At the rate we are going, I can imagine next year's headline:
"Goodnight Moon banned for encouraging children to communicate with
furniture."  And we all know where that can lead don't we?
         (Published in the Dallas Morning News October 26, 1999)
--
Mary Croix Ludwick   ludwick@swbell.net (home)
ludwickm@lisd.net(school)
Librarian, Owen Elem.,The Colony, Texas
Lewisville ISD(north of Dallas)   K-5

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