Witches and warlocks? Ban this, biyaaatch!

Branden Sanz

Dropping the Hammer

A recent development in the local community of Whitmore Lake caught my interest a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, the good citizens of this small village were outraged at certain books made available to their children by the school library and took steps to have these books banned. Headlining the list were the Steinbeck classic Of Mice And Men as well as the entire series of Harry Potter books.

Now, for those of you who been living in a cave, the Harry Potter books, written by J. K. Rowling, are about a young boy in modern-day England who one day finds out that his deceased mother and father were, in fact, a witch and a wizard and that the boy, Harry, is a powerful, if untrained wizard in his own right. The first four books of this series detail the adventures of Harry at The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We meet Harry's good friends, the poor but good hearted Weasley brothers, the buck-toothed and brilliant Hermione and the gentle half-giant Hagrid. We see goblins and dragons, talking snakes and foul sorcerous villains.

I've read the Harry Potter books and they are very good. While easy to read and technically "children's" books, they are quite long, well written, with good plots and great characters. Of course, that might explain why the latest edition, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,was the fastest selling book in the history of the world.

Yet it appears that the use of magic and the presence of witches was just too much for the puritanical ethos of a simple place like Whitmore Lake. Of course, this is not an isolated incident. Harry Potter has been banned all over the country, most notably in one the larger school districts in Los Angeles. To all you would-be banners out there, I have one very simple question: Are you kidding me?

We are constantly moaning about the current state of education in America (or lack thereof) and what we can do to improve it. I'll let you in on a little secret. Anything - anything - that gets children to read of their own volition is a good thing, witches and wizards included.

A little bit about myself: I like to read. My current book collection is just shy of 200 books, most of which I've read more than once. If I had to guess, I'd say that in my life I've probably read more than 1,000 books. What do I read? Well, pretty much anything. In the last week, I've read David Copperfield, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, two fantasy novels by Robert Jordan and I just started Dante's Inferno yesterday.

One reason I read so much (beyond the fact that I enjoy it) is because I suppose I'm good at it. Given a book with small type and a complex plot, I average about 110 pages an hour. I read Goblet of Fire, all 734 pages, in 4 hours. War and Peace? Two days. I do not mention my reading prowess for self-aggrandizement, but rather to illustrate a point. I don't believe the ability to read has much to do with actual intelligence. Rather, it's a learned skill, much like driving a car or shooting a rifle. The more you practice, the better you get.

Furthermore, I am of the firm belief that my reading ability is one of the primary reasons I am here at the University right now and not working construction for 12 bucks an hour in Hicksville, Nevada. You see, reading not only expanded my mind and increased my knowledge, but it gave me one of the greatest gifts of all: The ability to dream. By the time I was 12 years old. I had traveled to both Japan and Hong Kong with James Clavell, visited Ireland and Israel with Leon Uris and seen 18th Century America with James Michener. Those authors made the people and places they wrote about so real, so alive for me that I knew I just had to go there someday.

But what started me down this path? Where did I get my insatiable appetite for books? I remember it exactly. I was eight years old, and after seeing the animated movie for the 10th time I begged my Dad to go out and buy me a copy of The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. I was instantly transported to a magical world both fair and terrible. I was enchanted by heroes, wizards, elves, goblins and dragons. The day after I finished The Hobbit, I started on the Lord of the Rings and from there it was, as they say, all over but the crying.

So perhaps you can understand my refusal to believe that, just because a kid reads Harry Potter, he's going to grow horns and fangs, start drawing pentagrams in blood and begin praying to the spirits residing in a dead tree. Horsepuckey, I say. I absolutely dare you to look at me with a straight face and tell me that a ten year-old reading a 700-plus page book is a bad thing.

Maybe Harry Potter does for some kid what Lord of the Rings did for me: Takes them away to another world; makes the think and dream about places they've never been and things they haven't seen. Maybe - but only if the kid actually has a chance to read the book. The people who ban books are not protecting their kids - they are simply denying them something that might be the key to unlocking a whole new universe.

- Branden Sanz can usually be reached at David's Book Store (his second home) or over e-mail at hamrhead@umich.edu.