Childrens author J.K. Rowling signs one of her popular Harry Potter books at Adventures for Kids, a store in Ventura, Calif. (Photo by Dave LaBelle)

We got into a discussion about censoring a book or banning a book, and the kids got really horrified, Gamble said. They hadnt thought about book banning before.

When Harry Potter arrives at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he discovers an enchanted world where mail arrives by owl, images wave and wink inside their picture frames and best of all students soar on broomsticks in a wizard game called Quidditch. J.K. Rowling, the Scottish author of the wildly popular Harry Potter books, has opened a new world not just to Harry but to thousands of school children who are actually setting aside video games to read. Delighted teachers and librarians are savoring the Harry Potter craze. Few teachers, if any, appear to be assigning Harry Potter books as mandatory reading or adding the books to their curricula. Rather, they are reading Harry Potter aloud as a treat during class or after school. Librarians are hosting Harry Potter parties and launching Harry Potter book clubs. And over and over, from Benicia, Calif. to Abilene, Texas, teachers and librarians chant a familiar refrain: If you like Harry Potter or if youre on the waiting list for the next Harry Potter book here are some other books you might enjoy!Its every curiosity and everything that ever occurs to a child all woven into a story, said Susan Cranley, a librarian at Elmwood Place Elementary in Cincinnati who recently finished the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. Cranley read aloud after school several times each week to an appreciative audience of up to 18 students. She says she organized the optional sessions very selfishly because she wanted to see the books through childrens eyes. Her students laughed at the prankish poltergeist named Peeves and the three-headed dog called Fluffy. They discussed the concept of pet peeves and guessed at what would happen next. Cranley compares the books stark delineation of good and evil, as well as its potential impact on a generation of children, to the Star Wars trilogy. I absolutely do believe it will be as defining as Star Wars, she said. Many Harry Potter fans are enjoying reading for the first time. They might not become bookworms necessarily, but they will see something theyve never seen before, said Caroline Parr, a librarian at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Fredericksburg, Va. Her library is preparing a Harry Potter party complete with wizard foods like Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans (jellybeans). Theyre still looking for Harrys favorite: Chocolate Frogs. Sometimes Potter pops up in the classroom in unexpected places. Kerry Joseph was teaching her sixth graders about the roots of words. The root mort, found in words like immortal, refers to death, she explained. Oh, chimed her students at Washington, D.C.s Lafayette Elementary. You mean like Voldemort!The name of Rowlings dark wizard Voldemort does indeed conjure images of death. So fearsome that other wizards refer to him only as You-Know-Who, Voldemort murdered Harrys parents and tried unsuccessfully to kill Harry, leaving the infant with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. Josephs colleague, fourth-grade teacher Connie Karageorgis, pulled two paragraphs from Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone to show her students how good writers vary their sentences with imperatives, declaratives and interrogatives. The routine grammar exercise suddenly gained new interest. They were like Oh! This is from Harry Potter, Karageorgis said. Not everyone loves Harry Potter. Challenges to the books have cropped up in South Carolina, Georgia, Minnesota, Michigan, New York and California, where parents criticized the books for fostering fascination with the occult and the religion of Wicca. In a widely publicized objection, parent Elizabeth Mounce of Columbia, S.C. last month told the state Board of Education that the books have a serious tone of death, hate, lack of respect and sheer evil. Third-grade teacher April Gamble turned the controversy itself into a lesson. One of her students at Colonial School in Pelham, N.Y. came to class with author Judy Blumes column criticizing attempts to ban the books. We got into a discussion about censoring a book or banning a book, and the kids got really horrified, Gamble said. They hadnt thought about book banning before. Gamble and her students discussed how book banning relates to the First Amendment and why they would argue that prohibiting a book is not a good solution. What they said is those people are making a really loud noise about it, so were going to make a really loud noise in the other direction. Her students wrote letters, now on display at the local library, and are organizing a forum on book banning. Gamble explained that they must understand others arguments in order to refute them, and rude words such as dumb are off-limits for the forum. I think that a kids parents should decide whether a book is OK for the kid or not, wrote 8-year-old Hayley Serebransky. Classmate Erin Mitchell-Boyle, also 8, questioned whether the books detractors are truly familiar with the content. They think that their children are crying because the books are too scary, she wrote. I do not agree. Maybe the kids are crying because their parents wont let them read the books, or maybe a bully at school is picking on him/her. But did the parents read the books? They probably just said, Oh, that kid is on a broom, I dont want you to read this book. Its like everybody says, Dont judge a book by its cover.