This article was written by John Monk, an editorial writer for The State in Columbia, South Carolina. It was published in the Oct. 22, 1999, and is reprinted with permission.

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense."

That's the beginning of the notorious Harry Potter books, which S.C. parents called "evil" last week before the S.C. Board of Education.

Wanting to see what the hullabaloo was about, I read the first two Harry Potter books. They tell of a young boy and his friends -- Hermione (the smartest girl in the class) and Ron (Harry's best friend) -- at an imaginary school for wizards somewhere in England.

My conclusion: A+.

No wonder millions of children are reading these books by author J.K. Rowling. No wonder bookshops such as Columbia's Happy Bookseller are sold out and libraries have long waiting lists.

They're great, They're wholesome. They're fun.

The Potter books combine the detective work of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, the mirthful wordplay of Dr. Seuss and the lampoon portraits of Charles Dickens. No author in the English language has displayed a more frolicking imagination since Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland.

Reviewers have aptly compared the Potter books to C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.

But the Potter books transcend fantasy. They reflect the same wellsprings of human experience and imagination writers have mined for centuries:

• In Homer's Odyssey, clever Ulysses outsmarts the giant Cyclops in a cave. In the Potter books, Harry finds himself in the bowels of a castle matching wits with monsters in mortal combat.
• In King Arthur legends, as described by T.H. White in Sword in the Stone, the heir to the throne is identified when he pulls a sword from a rock. Harry, too, is an heir; one way he 13 known is by pulling a sword from a hat in time of need.
• In two of Dickens' best novels, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, a little boy is orphaned and mistreated by cruel adults. Harry Potter, an orphan, lives with the insufferable Dursley family, who keep him under the stairs.

Just as George Lucas' first Star Wars movie had the wise warrior Obi-Wan, the Potter books feature the wise Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts school, who says, "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Most wonderful about the Potter books is the way they connect to the heart, especially young hearts.

Though set mostly in a wizard's world, the Potter books promote -- through their characters -- friendship, love, bravery, self-reliance, the importance of family and tolerance toward those different from us. They depict the quest for knowledge, wisdom and right action -- the universal journey every human takes. The books condemn bullies, falsity, rudeness, greed and Nazi-like tendencies to denigrate and hurt those who aren't like us.

Rowling doesn't sugarcoat. Her characters can die or fall by the wayside. They struggle within themselves. But no worthwhile book, the Bible included, has only plastic people. Life is played for keeps. Good books reflect that.

The Potter books measure up to William Faulkner's standard. He said writers should work with the "verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."

Some claim the Potter books lure children into witchcraft.

Poppycock. You might as well say Gone With The Wind teaches young readers to be slave owners, or Treasure Island entices children to be pirates, or Peter Pan urges children to run away from home.

If we started to ban books dealing with the supernatural, we'd be tossing out some pretty good stuff.

To begin with, we'd have to get rid of at least four works by Shakespeare: Hamlet (ghost), Macbeth (witches), The Tempest (a spirit) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (fairies).

We'd also have to trash A Christmas Carol by Dickens. Imagine that: banning the most beloved of books because it has four ghosts as main characters!

It's understandable why some are upset at Harry Potter books. Many people just don't understand that writers use the supernatural as a prop. That's different from luring kids to the occult.

That said, however, we certainly should respect parents' rights to choose what their own children read. We shouldn't force children to read books they aren't ready for.

But school officials, librarians and teachers must stand firm against any attempt to ban Potter books from S.C. classrooms or schools. This is a state where tens of thousands of children read below grade level. And Porter books are turning kids on to reading.

If we ban these books, a dark force stands to be unleashed. It's not the occult. It's ignorance.

The best approach is for parents to read the Potter books with their children.

Betsy Hearne, in Choosing Books for Children, a Common Sense Guide, writes: "It's a lot more effective to join in reading what children are reading and to express reasoned opinions of what they're reading than to hide or confiscate their books.

"Partners can discuss books; dictators forbid them. Partnership breeds respect, dictatorship breeds rebellion. An open-book policy isn't just about theoretical rights of the child, it's what works best."

To read Harry Potter is to listen to a master storyteller.

If these books have magic in them, it's the magic of Shakespeare and Dickens and Lewis Carroll and Dr. Seuss.

I've just scratched the surface of their amazing nature. Give them a try. A new world awaits you.

And please, share these books with a child.

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