Subject: On Harry Potter? |
Bible Note: Tim, thanks for your additional input, and it's always refreshing to find another book nut! ..... To your question of whether I think some of these books (my list is horribly incomplete, by the way) had much to do with shaping society or merely were relecting it, my answer is that some books do little more than reflect societal conditions; other, more powerful, books both reflect and, in varying degrees, help to mold them. ..... T.S.Eliot, poet and Christian, said, "A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it." During all my reading life, I've hardly ever been influenced to high-ball it down to the book store to buy the latest best-seller, heeding instead the advice of British poet Samuel Rogers who wrote some 200 years ago, "When a new book is published, read an old one." To sum up, in regard to parents guiding their children in their first steps of reading, my position is this: The careful supervision by the parent of the child's reading material lays a firm foundation. The young reader, having once been exposed to the supremely good kinds of writing that nourish and enrich both mind and spirit, is, I think, less likely in later years to revert to inferior kinds of writing that do neither. --Hank |