by JRR

Created on: August 03, 2009   Last Updated: August 04, 2009

One may be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't at least heard of Harry Potter and his exploits at Hogwarts School for Witches and Wizardry. The first in the seven book series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by British author J.K. Rowling, was released in September 1998. As of 2008, the series has sold over 400 million copies and has been translated into 67 languages.

Like many other books in history, these too have become a center of controversy. Joining the ranks of Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye, parents and groups in several states have tried to have these books banned. The rally to ban these books is lead mostly by religious groups who claim a concern over the depiction and advocacy of magic, witchcraft and Satanism they feel the series promote. Between 1990 and 2000, the Harry Potter series was the most challenged books for an entire decade.

The series begins just before Harry's eleventh birthday. Upon learning he is a wizard and has received an invitation to Hogwarts, Harry meets his two new best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Throughout the series we follow Harry and his friends as they learn to become wizards and witches, fight evil, and deal with the normal obstacles of growing up such as loss, jealousy, first love and heartbreak.

The popularity of the Harry Potter series is unprecedented. The initial U.S. printing of the seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was twelve million copies, one million of which were pre-ordered through Amazon and Barnes & Noble web sites alone.

Even though fans of all ages have fallen in love with the series, the target audience was originally children ages eight to eleven. Young people who previously had little to no interest in reading became die hard fans. For some this drew misguided attention from different groups to have the books banned.

What many of these people have seemed to have forgotten is there are no bounds to a child's imagination. Children love these books and characters because many already have a belief in magical things. It has nothing to do with evil or Satanism, simply the innocence of a child's imagination. More harm is being done by taking these books away from children and prohibiting a love of reading, than anything they find in the pages.

Judy Blume, author of twenty-two books including Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, and a member of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), has also had her share of turmoil with censorship. In an article she posted on www.ncac.org/censorshipnews entitled Is Harry Potter Evil?, Blume sums this issue up very well. In this post she stated, "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're 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. ... The real danger is not in the books, but in laughing off those who would ban them."

The true evil is in taking these books away from children. It is in prohibiting their potential for a love of reading they may gain. By banning and burning these books, as some have done, they are destroying more than just the words of a British author, about a fantasy world, which many children believe in even before Harry Potter was even thought of. They may be closing doors to many worlds these children may have traveled to through their love of reading which they gained from a young boy, his friends and their exploits at Hogwarts.

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