After listening to an endless litany of the evils of Harry Potter, I finally read them myself.  Yes, I read all 6 books in an amazing 3 weeks or less.  I was shocked to find them engaging, fascinating and not without good philosophy.  I am not sure what all the fuss has been about.  Yes, it is about magical people.  Yes, they are witches and wizards, but they also have wonderful lessons and intricate plot and no little amount of writing skill.  I should not let a young child read them, but I would certainly hand it to an older child to be read alongside the parent.  I think that sometimes making things into a big deal gives them more power than they really should have.  Narnia has witches.  Tolkien has wizards.  We embrace them.  Maybe we should spend less time crusading for the removal of ____________ (fill in the blank).  If people spent half the energy given to things like this doing something truly useful to the world...  Well, you see my point. 

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Posted by eclecticeducation

I agree with you. My husband and I went to see the first movie only to see if it was appropriate for our then 6 year old. We fell in love with it. We have since seen all the movies and read all the books. At the time we felt it was too old for our child. I think he finally saw the first 2 at about 8 years old and the third one at about 9. He has been allowed to read the first 3 books. At book 4 I feel they are getting too mature for him to handle at this time and the movie certainly is because he's only 10. In my opinion the stories are fairy tales. They even follow the model for a fairy tale with stuff like having groups of 3. Real witches do not fly around on broomsticks and fight dragons. It's a fairy tale world. Now if someone objects to anything with magic, then I say stay away, but if like you said they like Narnia or LOTR, or if they like fairy tales or Wizard of Oz. I don't see where this is much different. I even saw a article on the web by Christianity Today that showed support for the story. I think people need to read it for themselves first before passing judgement.

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Posted by LizzieBee

Hi, glad to see you are posting again. I haven't been as active, but hopefully will be able to be now that things are settling down. We've been reading Harry Potter since they first came out. The Narnia books (which some Christians condemn) brought me to a saving faith in Jesus Christ as a fifth grader. I don't think the Harry Potter books are in quite the same class, but they do have a rip-roaring good story line about the battle between good and evil. Great post!

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