Excited About Harry Potter

Posted by Elizabeth Yetter May 23, 2007

My kids and I are anxiously awaiting the new Harry Potter movie, Order of the Phoenix, coming out this summer. We’ve watched the trailer at least a hundred times and have already begun rereading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix book.

We are also awaiting for the release of the 7 th HP book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Gallows. With all the hoopla going on about it, it’s bound to be just as brilliant as the previous books.

Of course, with these new releases this summer, there will be more people, although fortunately a minority, who will come out of the woodwork and scream about Harry Potter promoting witchcraft and Satanism. We’ll have another mom or two announcing that she will sue her child’s school (and waist the taxpayers’ money by doing so) if the HP books aren’t removed from the shelves of the school library. We’ll also have religious extremists hold their book burnings for the world to see (much to the embarrassment of sane people).

It makes one wonder why people are so uptight about their children possibly reading, and probably enjoying, Harry Potter. Ironically, they seem to have no problem with allowing their children to read one of the predominant religious texts, such as the Christian bible, which recounts tales of rape, murder, and incest. But a boy who attends a school for witchcraft and wizardry, a boy who fights against an evil dark lord, is somehow a symbol of evil to a very loud cluster of people.

It truly makes no sense to me. Children love the Harry Potter books. They are reading and they are enjoying the experience. You’ll hear no complaints from me.