In Defense of Harry Potter:
The following is a rebuttal to opposition by the Catholic Church and certain parent groups that claim that Harry Potter books promote evil.
My kids and I have read all of the Harry Potter books many times and they are a credit to the Potter name, which also happens to be ours. I can testify that the opposition to Harry Potter is absurd. There is nothing evil, malicious, or depraved about him or the books; however I find that in people who sit around and look for evil where there is none. They are the ones the bible talks about when it says, "Oh ye wicked and perverse generation...ye blind guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel." (Matthew 23:23-24) They're the ones who lack the courage to fight the real issues, like pornography, abortion, crime, child molesters, and political corruption, so they look for it in harmless books.
The Harry Potter books are the best-selling children's books in the world, not just the US, and as many adults read them as kids simply because they are wonderfully entertaining, like Star Wars. They are comparable to and even better than Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and other children's classics. They are written by a school teacher who loves kids and wants them to like reading. She commits the Awful Sin of entertaining children while making them think, something that many in the educational bureacracy have been avoiding for years.
The Catholic church banned them because they have MAGIC in them, and WITCHCRAFT, and they equate those two things with Satan Worship, even though there is no mention in the book of him or any of his servants, such as serial killers, child molesters, Al Qaeda, and some in the IRS. This is the same fanatic mentality that wants to ban magicians from children's birthday parties and eliminate Halloween, even though it teaches kids not to fear superstitious things. It is the same superstitious spirit that killed the so-called "witches" in Salem simply because they learned to read, taught themselves to swim, and could think for themselves.
These critics of Harry Potter either haven't read the books or they forgot to notice the whole point of the books, which is that good always wins out over evil, and that the hero is a pretty good role model for kids. If there really are kids who were converted to Devil worship after they read these books then they learned it at home way before they read them. If there really are kids who are learning to hate after they read Harry Potter, they learned it at home first, or maybe at Sunday School from some religious fanatic. (And I am not knocking Sunday School teachers here since I was one myself, only fanatic Sunday School teachers.) Every time something good emerges from the human race against all odds, there will always be extremist zealots (like the Sanhedrin and many politicians) who will kick it, box it, whip it, and beat it.
Regards, Adrienne Potter, with endorsements from the entire Potter family