The Harry Potter books have done something for young people that no schools in the world have been able to do.
THEY WANT TO READ !!!!
How horrible.
As for the movies. They are entertainment. Lighten up people.
That’s how I feel, yeah.
Mind you, I suppose some other books about magic-using youths could come along that strike me as truly malevolent. But the HP books aren’t among them. One huge saving grace to the HP books is the leitmotif of self-sacrifice, including the sacrifice of one’s very life, to save others. (As others have pointed out, this is a very good and even Christian-by-accident motif by Rowling.) It is hard for me to accept the argument that a book teaching such concepts is evil.
You took the words right out of my mouth. I assert that my sons love of reading is a direct result of Harry Potter.
When the books first started coming out he brought one home from school. We soon discovered that they were way above his reading ability, at that time. He had recently decided that he was "too old" to crawl into bed with Mom to be read too. That broke my heart, it was my favorite time of the day.
When he brought the book home, he asked me to read it too him. I did. By the time the second book came out, he couldn't wait to read it. This time, he would read a page or two to me, then I would take over, and we would alternate. By the third book, he was reading them too me!, and by the fourth, and all subsequent books we had to buy two books because we both wanted to read them right away. We would then discuss them, in detail and I would donate the second copy to the library.
Those are some of my most precious memories of me and my son. Talk of paranoid people will never take that away from me.
P.S. He called me this weekend (he is now away at college) to tell me that he took his new girlfriend to the movie, but that if I wanted to we could go together when he comes home this weekend for Thanksgiving!
Wow, what a flimsy excuse to expose children to the occult.
Pitiful!