Also from September 6, 2000 USA Today

[heidi tandy]

No: HPFGUIDX 1137

This is the "Against Book Banning" editorial - (also, are all of you 
members of Muggles for Harry Potter yet?)

Harry Potter faces biggest foe yet in book censors 

School's open, and Harry Potter is under attack -- again.

This time the enemy is not the fictitious forces of evil whom the 
young apprentice-wizard fights off in the wildly popular books by 
J.K. Rowling. It's the very real forces of self-appointed censors who 
want to tell other people's children what they can read.

In just the opening days of the school year, the American Library 
Association already has received reports from Texas, South Carolina 
and Illinois of new efforts to purge Harry and his friends from 
schools.

It may sound strange to the millions of children and adults who 
embrace the Potter stories for their imaginative charm, but some 
object to Harry and his friends at Hogwarts School on grounds they 
may draw youngsters into the occult. In addition to being No. 1 on 
best-seller lists for months, the Potter books also were the No. 1 
target last year of efforts to pressure libraries and schools into 
making the books difficult or impossible to get. But Harry is in good 
company.

Of the Modern Library's 100 best novels of the 20th century, one-
third have been removed or threatened with removal from bookstores, 
libraries and schools at some point. Among the 10 most-challenged 
books of 1999, Harry Potter edged out such perennial targets as the 
works of Judy Blume, Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou and John Steinbeck.

And the assaults on freedom to read don't come just from those whose 
mission is to spare the world from thinking about sex or coarse 
language. Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains one of 
the most-challenged books of the decade because of attacks from the 
politically correct espousing an ostrichlike attitude toward the 
abuse experienced by blacks in the 19th century.

The Library Association counted 500 formal protests and demands for 
withdrawal of books erupting in more than half the states last year. 
The good news is that in most communities there is resistance.

In Zeeland, Mich., the schools panicked in front of criticism, barred 
all classroom reading of Harry Potter books last year and removed 
them from open shelves of the libraries. But parents, students and 
teachers, seizing the word for the non-magical ordinary people in 
Rowling's books, organized ''Muggles for Harry Potter.'' 

They circulated a petition, spoke up at school board meetings and 
held protests. The superintendent backed down, removing most of his 
restrictions. Muggles is now a nationwide movement, with more than 
13,000 members as of last week. And the youngsters involved are 
getting a valuable civic lesson: that access to books is not 
automatic and must be fought for.

As plucky Harry surely knows, a triumph for freedom today doesn't 
mean there won't have to be another battle tomorrow.Today's debate: 
Back-to-school censorship Groups across country renew efforts to ban 
books from schools.