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by J. K. Rowling
Scholastic, 734 pages, $25.95

I was one of two "religious" representatives on a panel about "Morality at the Movies." The diverse group included movie-industry people, journalists, and lawyers, but somehow I got branded as the radical. Here is what I proposed: parents should support one another as they try to guide their kids on which movies are appropriate to see. "My kids know much better than I do which movies are best for them," one parent responded. "What right do parents have to say what is right for teenagers?" said one college student. "What's the big deal?" another adult chimed in. "As long as it doesn't support hate and violence, it's just entertainment."The discussion soon became heated and enjoyable, but I came away surprised at the cultural resistance to adults' acting like parents. Even in this post-Columbine era, daring to say which entertainment choices ennoble and which degrade children gets one quickly branded a "fundamentalist."So I have read the Christians Object to Harry Potter headlines with a jaundiced eye. These Christian protesters are newsworthy only because in our culture there is so little debate about what is good for our kids. Christians often serve as the cultural superego. In a morally chaotic world, it has become our task to voice objections to moral deviance, and it is the mainstream culture's job to tell us why we are "uptight," "ridiculous," and/or "bigoted." Along comes a popular children series about witchcraft and journalists scurry to their Rolodexes, looking under "F" for "frothy fundamentalists" to get a good quote. Thus when a relatively small number of Christian parents ask that their kids' schools not read Harry Potter, we read about it in all the major newspapers.

At 12:01 a.m. on July 7, Pottermania struck again with the release of book four in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. With a record-breaking first printing of 3.5 million in the United States, the book caused long lines of eager fans. (Expect next summer to be worse; we will get both the fifth book and the first movie.) Among those line-dwellers were many evangelicals. In fact, I would guess that the vast majority of evangelicals in this country who have encountered Harry Potter are as smitten with him as the culture at large. Many of my Christian friends bragged to me about their late-night family outing to purchase the book (I waited for the free review copy) and were eager to compare notes on whether the latest volume matched the quality of the first three. Much has been written about evangelicals' engagement with the culture and our drive to shore up crumbling family values via a Judeo-Christian ethic. And it is this impulse that warms the hearts of so many evangelicals when we read Rowling. The Harry Potter series is not only laugh-out-loud fun, but Harry is good. For those out of the loop, Harry is the orphaned son of two loving parents (albeit a witch and a wizard) who were murdered by one of the best embodiments of evil in fiction that has come along in some time, Lord Voldemort (watch out Nicolae Carpathia!)—or as most of the characters in the books call him, "He-who-must-not-be-named."The one-year-old Harry is mysteriously spared from being killed because of "the sacrificial love" of his mother, and Voldemort comes perilously close to dying when his spell against Harry backfires. The lightning-bolt scar on his forehead and the eternal enmity of Voldemort are all that Harry takes away from the struggle.Raised by his Muggle (nonmagical) uncle and aunt, the Dursleys, who hate all things magical, Harry suffers through a Dickensian childhood of sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs and never receiving a birthday present, all the while watching his same-aged cousin Dudley being spoiled with food and presents galore. All this changes when Harry turns 11 and discovers he is a wizard, famous in the magical world for defeating Voldemort, and attends boarding school at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. (The Dursleys tell their friends that Harry is at St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys). Each volume covers a year in Harry's life at Hogwarts, where with his best friends Ron and Hermione he struggles against a plot to do him in amid his school and extracurricular activities.Now for year four. The consensus is that Goblet of Fire is not only twice as long as any of the others but also better. The orphaned English wizard is now 14 and ready for more responsibility. It comes when he is illegally entered in the Triwizard Tournament (he is technically too young to participate). Harry knows that someone entered him in order to do him harm, but everyone thinks he rigged the ballot for his own glory. Thus our hero suffers ostracism from his friends, even Ron, while figuring out how to survive the tournament. And how does Harry cope? Yes, he gets discouraged and angry, but overall he displays courage, loyalty, compassion, joy, humility, even love. During the tournament, Harry must choose between winning and ensuring that others remain free from danger; he chooses the latter while hardly batting an eye. And all the while he sounds like a typical 14-year-old. That is Rowling's triumph: creating a "cool" good kid.

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September 4 2000, Vol. 44, No. 10