White House officials feared J.K. Rowling promoted witchcraft

The contrived "to be continued..." plot events from approx 20 pages from the end of each volume.

And so what? There is no virtue merely in reading for its own sake. Harold Robbins got many boys (and some girls) of my generation reading novels, but he was an awful writer.

Newts are creatures that live in ponds etc

the cliffhanger

Newt Gingrich does not live in a pond etc.
( I am taking that on faith; I have not actually checked. )

They didn't fear her writing; just the effect of witchcraft on the kids.

Harold Robbins? You must be kidding.

Critical Reception
Rowling is praised for her highly imaginative and creative talent. Her work is intricately plotted, and she is often compared to authors Roald Dahl, P. L. Travers and C. S. Lewis. The first four books of the “Harry Potter” series have been translated into thirty-three languages, in 130 countries. In November 1999, Rowling's books occupied the top three spots on the New York Times Bestseller List. Overall, her books are liked by adults as well as children, and are favored by both genders. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire had the largest first printing ever recorded. Critics and readers alike have noted Rowling's ability to collect and use interesting words and names in her books. Though critics comment that the plots of the first three books are rather formulaic at times, almost all state that the books are nevertheless highly entertaining and well worth reading.

One of the most striking things about Rowling's works is the amount of excitement they have generated. Initial marketing of the series was minimal"most of its popularity spread by word of mouth. The books are upbeat, humorous and light-hearted, making them very different from much of the children's and young adult fiction currently published. Many people feel that the Harry Potter books turn non-readers into book lovers. Some factions, however, deem the books as anti-christian, and are working to have them banned from public schools and libraries. Christian parents, the driving force behind this movement, are suspicious of books that contain descriptions of sorcery and witchcraft. According to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, the “Harry Potter” collection tops the list of the ten books most challenged in 1999. Overall, however, the series has received the support of parents, teachers, and librarians who contend that the books have renewed the public's interest in reading.

What books do you approve of?

A cogent objection.

It develop reading skill sets first of all along with a love of reading even if you do not care for the author!

I don't, of course, know how Contrex will answer, but, i can name quite a few children's books with a high order of literary merit or imaginative originality.

The Wind in the Willows
Where the Wild Things Are
The Tanglewood Tales
Treasure Island and Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses
Charlotte's Web
Just about anything by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel)
The Wizard of Oz
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Johnny Tremain
Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie--all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books (which give pictures of life on the edge of civilization to which children would likely not otherwise be exposed) . . .

And that's just off the top of my head.

Those are fantastic books. I know them all. It doesn't mean a person can't like these if they like Harry Potter. There is room for both.

Grimm´s fairytales were collected for adults, but are now mostly read by and for children and condemnd by some grown ups. The stories are loved and read all over the world.
H.C Andersen told his stories for children and in his stories are also super natatural things happening.
In my childhood Swedish books were plenty of fairies, trolls, giants and witches.
noone condemned them.
Main thing is children hear stories, read stories and get to like books.

I have not read Johnny Tremain but otherwise I enthusiastically agree with Setanta's list, and would add for the older children, Patrick O'Brian and the English translations of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste series. (My 14 year old nephew is currently reading his way through the O'Brian canon, and his 12 year old sister is mad about Alatriste) plus of course Dumas, Dickens, Arthur Ransome, Jack London, H G Wells, Ursula Le Guin... I hesitate to recommend C S Lewis' Narnia series, as I have problems with certain of his attitudes to adolescence and the (shallowly) buried Christian agenda, but I daresay this will not bother everbody.

What are the problems with his attitudes to adolescence ?

He appears to detest the onset of what I suppose I had better call sexuality for want of a better word. In its widest sense, encompassing e.g. gender stereotyping and sexism. Of course, he was a creature of his time, but the best writers transcend that, and there is more to it, rooted in Lewis' deeply odd personality. Most of the allegations of sexism center around the description of Susan Pevensie in The Last Battle where Lewis characterizes Susan as being "no longer a friend of Narnia" and interested "in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations".

J K Rowling herself said: "Susan, like Cinderella, is undergoing a transition from one phase of her life to another. Lewis didn't approve of that. He didn't like women in general, or sexuality at all, at least at the stage in his life when he wrote the Narnia books. He was frightened and appalled at the notion of wanting to grow up."

Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy and a fierce critic of Lewis' work, calls the Narnia stories "monumentally disparaging of women", interpreting the Susan passages this way: "There comes a point where Susan, who was the older girl, is lost to Narnia because she becomes interested in lipstick. She's become irreligious basically because she found sex, I have a big problem with that."

Of course, not everybody agrees with these views, especially certain fanzine editors, but they are valid ones, and they are quite widely held. Many people are repelled by CS Lewis. He was well known as a Christian propagandist, and many people see a certain dishonest hidden agenda in his books for children.

I did not include Lewis because i'm frankly not impressed with either his originality or the caliber of the literature. When one keeps in mind that the whole Narnia series came on the heels of The Hobbit (but before The Lord of the Rings, it is less impressive as a work of fantasy. When one considers that the original plot device--the old wardrobe as a conduit to Narnia--in light of Dodgson's Through the Looking Glass, that is also less impressive. Tolkien's The Hobbit is just good fun, and doesn't suffer from the major flaw of The Lord of the Rings, which is that it is godawful stilted. Both Tolkien and Lewis drew on a body of existing legend. Tolkien's was more academic--Anglo-Saxon historical poetry, Norse legend (the names of the principle dwarves, and the name Gandalf, appear in the list of names of dwarves in Snorri Sturleson's account of Norse mythology), and, to a lesser extent, old north European folk legend, from which we get goblins and trolls, etc. Lewis simply has talking animals, to which he adds a satyr.

I admit, too, to a prejudice against Lewis for his heavy-handed moralizing, and my lack of enthusiasm also comes from having Lewis' forays into science fiction, which are really, really bad.

*************************************

There are some of Contrex's recommendations over which i would hesitate. O'Brian's opus, for example, includes a lot of adult themes which i would hesitate to introduce to a child, although perhaps acceptable for late adolescence. In the first Aubrey/Maturin novel, Master and Commander, he has Jack Aubrey drunk at a reception in Mahon speaking of his men waiting for liberty with "their pricks a yard long"--and he is conducting an illicit, amorous affair with the port commander's wife--Molly Harte--throughout the novel. That being said, i would also comment that as a young reader, such things breezed right over my head because they weren't relevant to my life, and if you have a rollicking good adventure, well-told, then i was happy with it. There can be no doubt that O'Brian's novels are rollicking good adventure, and i've never run across a more careful and authentic writer about the era of sailing ships than O'Brian. His language, or rather the language he puts into the mouths of his characters, is particularly impressive. Maturin complains in one novel that he has been practiced upon, which means that he has been willfully deceived. I'm not sure that many modern readers will know what that means, let alone be astute enough to have placed such an expression in the mouth of an early 19th century character. Such examples of completely appropriate use of colloquial language abound. I've only ever caught O'Brian out in one gross error--he refers to ships of the United States Navy as "USN" this or that. The correct usage is U.S.S. Constitution, just as the correct usage is H.M.S. Victory. In the first case, it is United States Ship or United States Sloop--just as it would be His Majesty's Ship or His Majesty's Sloop in the latter case. Otherwise, i've never caught him in error, and it is no great criticism to see some errors in the people of the UK writing about America, or in Americans writing about the UK.

I was also rather surprised by his inclusion of Jack London, but i do understand that White Fang and The Call of the Wild function as adventure stories. I'd say that Contrex's list includes many titles for older children than i had had in mind.

I was also surprised by the inclusion of Ursula LeGuin. Not because i have any objection to her writing or the content--she's a wonderful author. It just wouldn't have occurred to me to put in a list of authors for children.

Oh--Johnny Tremain is a novel which may well not be often read any longer. It was popular in the 1940s and -50s. It is about an apprentice boy in Boston in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the American revolution. It would fall in the same category as the Aubrey/Maturin novels, or those of Jack London. Johnny is 14 years of age as the novel begins, and it spans about two or three years.

By the way, i just began re-reading The Golden Ocean by O'Brian, which is one of two novels which he set about Anson's circumnavigation and attack on the Spanish during the War of Jenkin's Ear (a quaint little war usually forgotten in the greater events of the War of the Austrian succession). It's one of his earliest novels--the second, i believe. I could be wrong (and i've just started re-reading it), but i recall that it is much less "for mature audiences" than the Aubrey/Maturin series.

I so agree about Lewis' "science fiction"; when I was 11 I had a friend who shared my mania for that genre, and an uncle likewise. I had just finished "The Space Merchants" by Pohl & Kornbluth, (a gift from my uncle) and my friend had just finished "That Hideous Strength". We swapped, and I was badly disappointed. I tried manfully with the Lewis, but there was too much moralising, the language was somewhat peculiar (he writes of people being "in" a planet) and it was rather heavy going. It was not just a case of not enough rocket ships or robots. I persevered with "Voyage To Venus" but it became clear to me that the label of science fiction was scarcely deserved. I did not altogether abandon Lewis; during my (late adolescent) Christian period, I found Screwtape intriguing. I also concur about the (unfavourable) comparison with Tolkien, although I have much less patience with the latter, and "legend/saga" type fiction than I had 40 years ago.

Except... this has made me recall T H White's "The Once And Future King" which I read first at 12 and again with an adult enjoyment at 30. A worthy addition to my list.

I suppose I see your point about certain adult themes in Aubrey/Maturin, although I think (at least in the UK this is a non-controversial view) 14 is plenty old enough to read about adult sexuality handled appropriately. There are numerous plot threads about buggery in the series also. I had certainly heard about that when I was 14! (in 1966).

Regarding the "USN" prefix for the Constitution, (the War of 1812 frigate) I tend to side with O'Brian on this. The vessel appears to be described thus elsewhere. The designation "USS" standing for "United States Ship" was adopted in 1907 (Executive Order by Theodore Roosevelt). Prior to that time, no designation was used in official documents. Knowing of O'Brian's penchant for sourcing material and nomenclature from contemporary documents both official and private (he particularly employed naval officers' letters home as sources of detail and idiom) I hesitate to condemn it out of hand as an "error". Maybe that was how the Royal Navy described her in writing, although I have seen the USN usage in modern US material related to Charlestown Navy Yard.



Not only do Ursula Le Guin's nontargeted works appeal to many older children, she has written quite a number of works aimed at children and young people.

Snipped from Wikipedia:

Books for children and young adults

The Catwings Collection

* Catwings, 1988
* Catwings Return, 1989
* Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings, 1994
* Jane on her Own, 1999

Annals of the Western Shore

* Gifts, 2004 (PEN Center USA 2005 Children's Literature Award)
* Voices, 2006
* Powers, 2007 (Nebula Award winner, 2008)

Other books for children and young adults

* Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, 1976, ISBN 0-15-205208-9
* Leese Webster, 1979, ISBN 0-689-30715-2
* Solomon Leviathan's Nine Hundred and Thirty-First Trip Around the World, 1984, ISBN 0-399-21491-7
* A Visit from Dr. Katz, 1988, ISBN 0-689-31332-2
* Fire and Stone, 1989, ISBN 0-689-31408-6
* Fish Soup, 1992, ISBN 0-689-31733-6
* A Ride on the Red Mare's Back, 1992, ISBN 0-531-07079-4
* Tom Mouse, 2002, ISBN 0-7613-1599-3