Thoughts for the Serious Reader of Harry Potter
This high school student has been visiting many of the better American universities and thinks the schools are trying way too hard to make the “This School is Just Like Hogwarts!” connection with applicants. This wouldn’t be notable, I think, except she makes this complaint in her ‘Taking the Magic out of College’ essay on the Sunday New York Times editorial page.
Talk about shared text… (H/T to Richard of Augustana!)
The subject of witchcraft, real, alleged, and fictional, has been a big part of the discussion for serious readers of Harry Potter since the explosion of the magic controversy soon after the first books were in print. In America post-Salem, even with the advent of Wiccans and openly professed Witches in recent years, the idea of a real world “witch-hunt” by those concerned about occult influence, a hunt in which people thought to be witches are shunned or killed, is hard to take seriously.
In today’s Christianity Today online, Robert Priest reviews Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa by Adam Ashforth (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005) in an article called ‘Witches and the Problem of Evil.‘ It isn’t an easy read but it is an important one. I came away from it with a much better understanding of the pervasiveness of witchcraft concerns in the world (and astonished at the violence involved) and with ideas about the psychology of Harry Hating I wouldn’t have had without this introduction. Highly Recommended.
These two pieces by Eugie Foster (here and here) which together spell out the Ten Myths about Writing for Kids confirmed my thinking about Joanne Rowling and Stephenie Meyer in two respects: (1) neither set out to write for children and (2) thinking of them as ‘kid lit’ authors is so far off base as to seem bizarre. None of the myths the estimable Ms. Foster discusses could possibly have been on Ms. Rowling’s or Mrs. Meyer’s mind when they set out. Here is the list of ten myths; check out the articles linked above for the excellent discussion — [Read more…]
Headlines last week read “Vatican Condemns Twilight.” If that sounds familiar to Potter readers, it is the echo of the virtual reality experience we had in 2005 when Star Chamber Catholics in Canada created the “Pope Condemns Harry Potter” controversy on the eve of Order of the Phoenix‘ publication.
That was pretty silly, because the Pope didn’t do anything of the sort. This report turns out to be the real deal. I’ve written about it over at Forks High School Professor and mention it here for these reasons: [Read more…]
Two very kind letters about Harry Potter’s Bookshelf arrived in my inbox this morning. Read on if this sort of thing is any interest to you! [Read more…]
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