Issue 76, Winter 1999/2000
by Judy Blume
I happened to be in London last summer 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 was still months away from publication in the United States, and I have an 8-year-old grandson who is a big Harry Potter fan.
It’s 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 has recently come under fire. In Minnesota, Michigan, New York, California and South Carolina, parents who feel the books promote interest in the occult have called for their removal from classrooms and 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’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.
I’m not exactly unfamiliar with this line of thinking, having had various books of mine banned from schools over the last 20 years. In my books, it’s reality that’s 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’s not one “ism,” it’s 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 is not 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 1980’s and often leaves school principals trembling with fear that is then passed down to teachers and librarians.
What began with the religious right has spread to the politically correct. (Remember the uproar in Brooklyn last year when a teacher was criticized for reading a book entitled “Nappy Hair” to her class?) And now the gate is open so wide that some parents believe they have the right to demand 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 students’ right to read, to imagine, 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’s probably 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’re 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?