I didn’t get into the Harry Potter books right away. I think I had heard about them but I didn’t get around to reading them until the next town over from my hometown banned them.
The fact that Zeeland, MI school system banned the Harry Potter books was big local news so my dad (who is a geek as well) picked up a copy of the first Harry Potter and got hooked.
We went on a family vacation to Arizona around that time and my dad brought Harry Potter with him. I started reading it then, and I became a Harry Potter fan at that point. My mom read them as well, and even my sister did, even though she didn’t like anything else remotely geeky.
I’m sure my family would have gotten into the Harry Potter series at some point, but I do think it’s funny that the reason we got into the series was because it was banned.
The Harry Potter series isn’t one of the top banned books, but it was the one that directly affected me. I thought it was silly that it was banned, but I’m glad I was able to get into the series at that point in time.
I still have to defend it to my ultra-conservative Christian friends!
I hate having to defend stuff like this. I’m a Christian and quite frankly I know the difference between fantasy and reality. The fact that it needs explaining infuriates me.
Agreed! I’m a Christian too, and it’s not hard to realize that Harry Potter is fiction!
I find it very funny that the groups who race around banning books haven’t figured out that the very act of banning those books creates a huge leap in readership and sales for the very books they’re trying to get rid of!
And I didn’t get into Harry Potter myself until the third book came out. I… wasn’t interested at first, but my best friend was working for Amazon in Seattle, and started reading them, then recommended them to me, insisting I needed to start reading them to my then 3 year old daughter. And… that was that, we were hooked! I find it interesting (and extremely irritating) that most of the people screaming about how evil the Harry Potter books are apparently haven’t even read them. How can you have an opinion on it if you haven’t even read the books or made any attempt to verify your claims? It’s ridiculous!