Anti-Harry Potter Video???

[Ebony]

No: HPFGUIDX 25382

I received an e-mail from one of my NCTE digests and was slightly 
alarmed.  Has anyone heard of the video being referred to?

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Subject: Re: Re: [ncte-talk] Anti-Harry Potter video warns about 
witchcraft

Hi - Just had to jump into this conversation.  I have never had a 
parent object or ban a book before in my career and I am so adamantly 
and passionately opposed to censoring that it came as a complete 
shock to me that a parent is refusing to allow her daughter to read 
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets because it teaches sorcery 
and their religion (Jehovah's Witness) does not allow it.  I asked 
her if she read the book, as it does not teach sorcery or anything 
like that.. and she said she is not allowed to.  She then said her 
daughter could read The Hobbit (like that isn't the same thing??).. 
But then my readiness to switch, or something, must have prompted her 
to investigate The Hobbit, which she said she had read and her
other children had read, blah,blah, blah,... and now I've been 
informed that she can't read that either.  Now, she's not opposed to 
the class reading it and her daughter sitting in the library for the 
duration reading books and writing "book reports,"... but that's not 
how I teach... So, I'm frustrated, upset and in search of another 
book to start off the school year (I'm think Adventures of 
Huckleberry Finn)!!  Thanks for letting me vent.

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End note--I've been in this colleague's shoes (actually, was there 
last year).  It is a VERY frustrating and infuriating thing to have 
spent a good 20+ hours preparing a full unit around a novel that the 
profession is legitimizing (the NCTE and the IRA *love* Harry Potter 
and want to add it to the recognized body of adolescent lit 
appropriate for the classroom)... and then to be unable to teach it 
because you don't want to exclude all the other kids.

Sigh.

--Ebony AKA AngieJ (who is glad she teaches high school now)