Monday, June 23, 2003

I’ve had many discussions with various folks about the Harry Potter books.

I like them. I’ve read the first four and plan to buy and read the new one. I plan to buy and read the rest as they come out as well.

As a Christian, I can understand the concern Christian parents have about certain aspects of the HP stories - the elements of witchcraft, the way “regular” people are portrayed negatively, the way the kids in the stories seem to flout the rules and discipline, etc. I’m not going to argue my points on those specifics. But I will say this (as I posted over in the comment thread at the Thinklings post on the subject, where there has been a sometimes heated exchange along a couple of their posts about the wickedness vs virtue of HP.

My latest comment was this:

And maybe it’s because I don’t have children, but I think we credit books (and some movies) like this with having a little too much influence with kids. When I was a very young child, I read plenty of fairy tales that included magic and fairies and unicorns and wizards and flying carpets and pumpkin coaches, and I don’t believe that I ever thought that stuff was real or possible. I understood from a very early age that there was no Tinkerbell, no Wicked Witch of the West, no Fairy Godmother, no Dracula or Frankenstein, or whatever. I knew it was just a story. A fictional, entertaining story.

So why are we assuming that kids today won’t be the same?