“Fundamentalism is, 'I will not open my mind to look on your side of the argument at all. I won't read it, I won't look at it, I'm too frightened’.” -- J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter is a well known series. While most people may not have read it, they have at least heard about or have watched the films. With the last film coming this July, I felt that this blog needed a little bit of magic. So, this post is going to be about the Harry Potter series and its connection to book banning and censorship.

The Harry Potter series is a beloved book series. It’s been read by billions of people, children and adult alike. There are seven books in all. Then, there is also The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which is a collection of children’s stories that are read to young witches and wizards in the world of Harry Potter. The United States version of the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was published in September of 1998 and with the publication and selling of this novel came ridicule and banning.

At first, it was just a harmless novel for children to enjoy. Then, someone decided that it was full of satanic and cult rituals, including magic spells. After one person believes that a book is dangerous, then soon, they all flock in and create a frenzy that is really not needed. The same happened with a few, if not all, of the rest of the novels in the series.

I literally grew up reading these books. I was eight years old when the first book came out. In my school at the time, a Catholic elementary/middle school, a few of the students in my grade were selected to read the first book. I was not one of these students, but my best friend was. She told me about the book and that prompted me to go out and buy, well, have my mother buy it for me. She gladly spent the fifteen or twenty dollars on the book and I read it on the way home from the book store and I finished it in about two days. I was hooked from the first page. Then, I heard that it was a book series and the next book was coming out the next year. I couldn’t have been more excited. At the time, I had no idea what book banning was or that it even existed, but, there were stories in newspapers that dealt with Harry Potter being an abomination and a horrible story to let your children read. These attempts to stop Harry Potter at a national level were futile because it is one of the most popular book series of all time.

These attempts, however, worked on a much lower scale. Several schools and public/private libraries did end up banning the children’s books deeming they were unfit to be read by anyone, children especially. J.K. Rowling, the author of the popular books, did an interview in 2008 where she discussed the issue of banning Harry Potter.

"I can cope with a bad review. No one loves a bad review but a useful review is one that teaches you something. But to be honest the Christian Fundamentalist thing was bad. I would have been quite happy to sit there and debate with one of the critics who were taking on Harry Potter from a moral perspective. In a sense we have traded arguments through the media. I've tried to be rational about it. There's a woman in North Carolina or Alabama who's been trying to get the books banned-she's a mother of four and never read them. And then- I'm not lying, I'm not even making fun, this is the truth of what she said-quite recently she was asked [why] and she said 'Well I prayed whether or not I should read them, and God told me no.' Rowling pauses to reflect on the weight of that statement, and her expression one of utter disbelief. 


"You see, that is where I absolutely part company with people on that side of the fence, because that is fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is, 'I will not open my mind to look on your side of the argument at all. I won't read it, I won't look at it, I'm too frightened.' That's what's dangerous about it, whether it be politically extreme, religiously extreme...In fact, fundamentalists across all the major religions, if you put them in a room, they'd have bags in common!" she laughs loudly before sobering. "They hate all the same things, it's such an ironic thing."
 

That is the entire quote of hers about the issue, credited to http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org. She understands that people give bad reviews, but she also knows that there are people who are just too stubborn or afraid to even pick up the book and try to read it and give it a chance.

I agree with J.K. Rowling. I understand that not everyone is going to like every book that is ever printed, but I do not tolerate the people who feel a book should be banned when they haven’t even picked up the book or attempted to read it. They decide out of sheer ignorance that this book should be banned because of something they heard. It’s insane.