Too Few Books and a Magical Dilemma

I just wanted to report that I've finished my 8 books. It doesn't feel like all that much of an accomplishment, honestly...the goal of 8 feels appallingly low. All my life I've read voraciously. I majored in English and took more than twice as many literature classes in college as I was required to. I taught high school English for five years and loved immersing myself in great literary works. Now? When I have a minute of respite from managing little ones and the endless picking-up-the-house cycle, I tend not to sit down with a book. It's easier to turn off my brain and turn on the tv or lose myself on Facebook.

So I think the value of this one was less in the books themselves and more in the wake-up call it gives me. I don't want to become a person who doesn't really read.

Anyhow, the last one was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Joy's been asking me to read it for months because I won't let her at it until I've finished it. She finally wore me down. I'd read the first chapter, and I finished the rest in one long evening. Joy snatched it up the next morning and had it read before bedtime, I think. Now we've both read the first two, and she's already on me to preview the third.

I realize the Harry Potter debate is SO ten years ago. It's been about a decade since much of the Christian community in America sent up an indignant outcry about these novels and their use of witchcraft and sorcery. But my kid is nine now, so we have to start making a call on this stuff. For those of you who might care, here's my two cents.

They're really good books. They're imaginative and engaging, with fantastic, round characters, gripping plotlines, and a masterfully whimsical narrative voice. Yes, they have magic in them. But so do the Lord of the Rings novels, and the Chronicles of Narnia, and most fairy tales, and just about every Disney movie. If you categorically dismiss any story with magic in it, you may lose more than you bargained for.

I get that the setting of these novels is closer to normal, modern life than most of the tales mentioned above. Your 11-year-old is not likely to take up orc-hunting or try to turn a pumpkin into a coach. But it seems to me that a kid who is able to read and understand a Harry Potter novel is a kid who is old enough to talk about it with you. And if your kid can't grasp the difference between a fictional world where magic can be good or evil, and our world, where God asks us not to seek powers that don't come from Him, then I think you have a bigger problem than Harry Potter. I'm just saying.

I hear that the books get progressively darker as they go on. Certainly the second was darker than the first. I've warned Joy that I'm not going to let her tear through them all right away...she may need to sort of age into them. And if they get crazy dark, then we'll set them aside. But right now, I'm ok with them.

Having said that, I can respect the decision some parents are making to make the books unavailable to their kids. Certainly we all have to figure out where to draw the line, and I understand why many might draw it here. What frustrated me ten years ago was not a measured decision to stay away but the knee-jerk reactions coming from people who hadn't bothered to think it through on their own. That kind of bandwagon-hopping contributes to the depressing reputation that Christians have in this nation. And it makes our task (serving the people around us and seeking to share the really good news of Jesus's love with them) a whole lot harder.

I hadn't planned to write all this stuff, and if I don't quit now I'll reread it a million times and take half of it out. Whether or not that would be a good idea, I don't have time for it now. So for once you get me talking off the top of my head. :)

Hope you're all having a magically wonderful day!