To ban or not to ban....

Harry Potter is an excellent example of a high fantasy genre. It is important to expose children to many different types of fiction and allow them to develop their own opinions of the story. I feel like as long as you do not try to expose them to material that is either too serious or mature for their age or grade level there is no reason that it should be restricted.

J.K. Rowling's fantastical story is very well written. It has many aspects that could be used for instructional purposes, but also is a good pick for a reading circle. This is a story that is going to keep the attention of the children, and maybe get some of the struggling readers more interested in reading.

Some of the reasons Harry Potter was banned was because some themes of the story go against peoples religious beliefs. They didn't want tales of witchcraft and dark magic being told to their children. Their fear is that this will create the potential for their children to stray away from the beliefs they have been taught to follow. While I can understand that parents want to protect their children from ideas that they consider to be bad, I do not think that reading a book like Harry Potter is really all that bad. Many other children's stories include ideas similar to those in Harry Potter, so why is Harry Potter different from these other stories? My belief is that this story gained such popularity because of it's awesomeness and that it was this near instant popularity that caused the uproar. It needs to be realized that this popularity was because of Rowling's writing ability and the adventure. So many students would be able to dive into this story. So I believe that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone, and all of the other Harry Potter stories, should be allowed in the classroom, as long as the children are old enough to appreciate the story and occational dark themes.