{"id":5180,"date":"2005-07-19T09:30:27","date_gmt":"2005-07-19T09:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/the-word-on-harry-potter.html"},"modified":"2005-07-19T09:30:27","modified_gmt":"2005-07-19T09:30:27","slug":"the-word-on-harry-potter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/the-word-on-harry-potter.html","title":{"rendered":"The Word on Harry Potter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Want Harry Potter?<\/p>\n

Here’s your post. <\/p>\n

I read the first five novels in the series, not because I have a huge interest in them, but because I wanted to see for myself if they deserved the controversy and the praise, both for the sake of being on the same page as my daughter, as well as for work purposes. I thought they were okay up to the fifth book, at which point Rowling’s editors had clearly stepped back, much to the detriment of the book. I’m not going to go on at length about the quality of the books – Rowling is obviously imaginative, has a vision and a moral sense, but the books, in my opinion, are also very flawed – way too much dialogue, repetition, recapitulation. They aren’t evocative, they’re expository. I don’t think I’ll be reading this one – I don’t see any related work assignments on the way, so I should probably stick to the other 20 books sitting here beside me on the couch, demanding my attention. <\/p>\n

My daughter read it on Saturday and Sunday, and she said it was good, and that she cried – I haven’t had time (she’s out of town) to really discuss it in depth with her, but her initial reaction seemed to indicate satisfaction, but not deep excitement. <\/p>\n

Now for the Catholic angle:<\/p>\n

Christopher Blosser has a very thorough (up to last Thursday, when he posted it) roundup of the Ratzinger on Potter business<\/a><\/p>\n

HOWEVER, if this is something that interests you (and if you’re needing to refute the impression that THE POPE HAS CONDEMNED THE HARRY POTTER BOOKS), please<\/em> go to John Granger’s site. Later today, he will be posting an article that looks into the mess in detail, and highlights some apparent discrepancies in Michael O’Brien’s stance toward the curial evaluations of Potter over the years.<\/a><\/p>\n

(When I started writing this post, I thought the piece was up – but it’s not. I guess he’ll be putting it up later – he is<\/em> out west, and it’s early out there)<\/p>\n

For his part, Michael O’Brien has a letter up on his site evaluating his experience of being on CNN on Friday with Granger, as well as current controversies.<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Want Harry Potter? Here’s your post. I read the first five novels in the series, not because I have a huge interest in them, but because I wanted to see for myself if they deserved the controversy and the praise, both for the sake of being on the same page as my daughter, as well…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Word on Harry Potter - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/the-word-on-harry-potter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Word on Harry Potter - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Want Harry Potter? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}