h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I believe that much of the negative reaction in America was also directed at the books' portrayal of magic as a positive thing. This runs counter to the dogma of many conservative religious groups, so naturally they wish to ban it.

An interesting parallel can be drawn to Frank L. Baum's Oz books, which were also banned by many groups, and from public and school libraries, for much the same reason. Some people's God, it would seem, does not want children to grow up with an imagination.

Makes me wonder why so many Americans buy the Narnia books for their kids (who, presumably, don't get all the allegory in them at the tender age of 8). Free speech etc. only extends to conformists.......

Oh boy! I really can't understand all this absurd typical american stuff. I mean all these funny laws, trails, organisations, people, ... ! Really ridiculous! "Old lady gets 1 millon dollar cause her coffee was too hot.", "Dosser gets 2 million for beeing saved from freezing to death.", "New Passage in the manual for microwave oven: Don't try to dry your pets in the oven!".
Ok, I understand why I shouldn't dry my pets in the microwave but why the hell has it to be commented in the manual?! Are the Americans so stupid? Oh probably Cliton will send his Marienes to invade Europe for this bad comment. Perhaps he'll just stick his cigar in someone's ... nose. Let's get back to the topic...
... uhm, yes I just want to mention that even in countries without the freedom of speech such books wouldn't be banned, even not from school. (e.g. in Germany 11.class we read a book named "The Reader" about a cruel love between a 15-years-old boy and 40-years-old former concentration camp warder; contains a lot of sex and violence!!)

Well, imagination, along with skepticism and a sense of humour *are* possibly the greatest threats to ignorance-based, we'll-do-all-the-thinking-for-you brands of religion.

Still, it is a step up from burning old women at the stake for the crime of being mildly eccentric, so I suppose the conservative churches *have* inched forward slightly in the last few centuries.

Anyway, surely the Bible itself is a rather unhealthy book for young minds - let kids get hold of it, and the next thing you know there'll be fratricide, incest, smiting and sacrificing going on all over the place.

Uh-oh - generalised yank-bashing has started again.

Assuming the microwave/dog incident isn't an urban legend, I suppose it'd be in the manual because once one idiot has done something stupid and made it onto the news, lawyers worry about being taken to the cleaners if they don't put warnings on their products and some other customer does the same dumb thing.

Given the large population of the USA, it seems quite likely there will, in absolute terms, be a greater number of idiots there than in most other industrial countries. Add to that the relative affluence, and the strength of the consumer culture, and once a new product comes on the market, I presume America is (without wanting to offend anyone) the likeliest place for some idiot to find some dumb way of misusing it.
Therefore, it seems quite natural that the USA would lead the world with seemingly obvious warnings


Besides, there are plenty of stupid product labels over here Peanuts : 'Warning - contains nuts'
Glue : 'Avoid contact with eyes'
etc...
Even technical rope-climbing hardware for cavers now comes with a 'Warning, Caving is Dangerous' sticker on it.

Presumably, anyone so stupid that they need to be told probably can't read anyway.

We Americans are not that stupid! We understand that there are individuals in out society who are. We put warning labels on everything so that when they do something stupid we can say "See? I told you so!" They then also have no basis for a lawsuit (which is an American pasttime).

As far as the religeon angle, we have a much more diverse culture than most countries. We have a far wider spread of religeous beliefs. I am Christian, but I don't see anything wrong with books like you describe. I personally enjoyed Robert Asprin's Myth series, which is based in a universe of magic and dimensional travel. I also performed in a stage production of Narnia in college. A few people are making a loud noise about this because unlike Narnia, which was an adaptation of part of the bible, Harry Potter's books speak favorably of sorcery to children.

On a side note, the lady who sued McDonald's for several million for spilling her coffee? McDonald's had had many complaints of the coffee being too hot and the government had told them repeatedly to turn the temperature down (stale coffee tastes better hot). The lady had third degree burns on her crotch that required surgery because the coffee was so hot. McDonald's appealed the case and she ended up only getting about $100,000 - just a little more than her doctor and lawyer bills. Bet your news station didn't cover that. Would you take a third degree burn on the crotch for a few thousand?

It does seem US-bashing crops up occasionally, but I think it's a little less common than it once was, or maybe I'm just staying in the more reasonable areas of the site these days. Don't worry, many of us are on the side of tolerance and understanding (just keep me off the topic of religious extremists and creationism)

Your point about the coffee is very well made - a general media problem is that stories are rarely followed up unless the end result is more 'newsworthy' than the original article, even in the case of the original story being inaccurate, or (as in the case of many Euro-scares in the Daily Mail or Daily Express in the UK) almost entirely fabricated.

Regarding law, the use of punitive damages is one that I think should be used much more in certain circumstances in the UK, as there are definite areas of law over here (such as death or serious injury at work where the company is clearly at fault) where both the number of prosecutions and the level of resulting fines and damages is reprehensibly low.

I certainly couldn't point to *any* justice system in the world and say it was perfect, and I don't know who could. Hell, we had a young doctor here sue a hospital for a million pounds for loss of earnings after pricking herself on a discarded needle. I can understand compensation if she'd actually contracted a disease, but if someone pricks their thumb and dosn't catch anything nasty, but even so, they get so neurotic they're 'incapable of working as a doctor for the rest of their life', I for one can't see they would have lasted long in the job anyway.

On the religious front, even compared to a country with a similar spread of belief systems, I suspect the extent of religious broadcasting in the US makes religion generally more visible, as well as somewhat more influential.
I am also sure, as with many similar 'Save our children from.......' campaigns, many people are just climbing on the media bandwaggon over a popular book to try and get free publicity. Half of them probably don't really care about the book, and most have probably never read it anyway.

Um. The reason the same conservative groups that are against Harry Potter aren't complaining about the Narnia Chronicles is because they were written by a Christian man with very close ties to Christianity. And the people in the Chronicles didn't go around with magic wands and zap people. There are good morals in both series, and yet I think this could be one reason that conservative groups don't mind the Narnia Chronicles. They also know on average much more about C.S. Lewis than they do about JK Rowling.
Possibly these groups are worried that the Harry Potter books would give children ideas of magic and magic/sorcery schools, whereas that's not what C.S. Lewis did in his books.
I like the Harry Potter series myself and wouldn't mind letting my children read them if I had any. Hope all that made sense.

Can't say it for a fact, but I suspect the same people who don't want their children to read Harry Potter due to the fact that it contains (gasp) magic, also don't let their children read the Oz boooks, or the Narnia books, or Tolkein, or any fantasy whatsoever. (I wish there was a way to Save the Children from those parents.)

I live in "Midwestern America" and hadn't heard about the desire to ban the novel, but then again, those movements are led by the religious extremists who I tend not to listen to.

I did read about some prestigious British Literary Award that almost went to Rowling...missed going to Rowling by one vote...and that the deciding vote cast was by the former wife of Mick Jagger (I forget her name momentarily) for Seamus Heaney's Beowulf translation. (what a relief...a voice of sanity! )

I mean, the books might be enjoyable reading...but more important literature than Heaney's Beowulf?!

I'm sorry, I don't think so.

I just have to say that my mother, the archtypal midwestern conservative Christian with kneejerk reaction to things, barely registers Harry Potter on her Satan is coming for YOU map.

If there is a big noise about banning the books, it's missed most of the conservative Christian types I know.

I have a feeling it was a couple of people who know Jerry Falwell and have media connections who *tried* to start a trend against them and failed miserably.

As a 30 year old "yank", I adore the books and hope that they remain as treasured through the years as the Oz and Narnia books have.

Being from the midwest, I can only say that I have heard nothing about a book ban. I believe that there may have been a small movement to do such, but it's supporters would only be missing out on some of the greatest books written for children (or anyone for that matter), and I doubt such an isolated group would put even a dent in JK Rowling's sales or popularity. The first Potter book has already made a list of classics of the 20th century!

As for comparisons with C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, the only similarity I've drawn is the total of 7 books in the completed sets. I am beginning to read the Narnia Chronicles to my 5 year old a chapter a night for bedtime stories, and I can't wait until he's old enough to understand the Potter books better so I can read them to him as well.

Unfortunately there are closed-minded idiots the world over, America does not corner that market.

I agree. Whoever you are and wherever you go, there are always going to be stupid people around. Just because some Americans sued companies for stupid reasons doesn't mean that all Americans do. Also, just because some people (usually devout Christians and weirdos, in my opinion) think that Harry Potter promotes witchcraft doesn't mean we all do.

I loved the Harry Potter books. They were pure fantasy and had nothing to do with modern Wicca or witchcraft. Think about it this way: if you took out every children's book in the entire world that had absoloutely nothing to do with fantasy or magic, you would be left with some very slim pickings. I wish that somebody could just write a book about magic and wizards without all of this contravercy...

Oh but they did go round zapping people, which was actually my point. (the White Witch in TLTWATW was a nasty piece of work one point of her wand and you were stone). The point being that unless a book incites hatred based on racial/religious/gender etc. then it's probably a BAD THING. Books written to entertain children, no matter how far away from "Christian" ideals, should be censored by the parents.

OK. I'll give you the glue and the caving. But "contains nuts" can save lives (so many people have a potentially life threatening allergy to nuts, which are ubiquitous these days).
It's not really Yank bashing - it's bashing anyone who comes up with really silly ideas. Sillieness knows no formal boarders

OK Don't all shout at once. What I meant to say was that IF a book incites etc. then it is a BAD THING. Sorry

Ah - I had a slight formatting problem and missed out a carriage return, so the word 'Peanuts' got left on the end of the previous line, making things less intelligible than intended.

(Actually, I'm not sure if peanuts are as bad as some other nuts, but they put warnings on bags of other nuts too.)

Actually (although I'm obviously not an expert) I think peanuts are the worst offenders. There are plenty of reports (ok, ok, mainly in the newspapers) about people going into analeptic (?) shock after eating a product which contained a miniscule amount of peanut oil and dying. It is also recommended that children under 5 (so my peaditrician told me) do not have peanut products of any kind, since the allergy is something which can suddenly develop (that goes for all of us btw).
To get back to the point though: some warnings on things can seem to be a bit superflous, some, however, are the result of bitter (painful and tragic, even) experience on the part of manufacturers and users of their products.
I think it was Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black who said "1 person isn't stupid - people are stupid and ignorant". How true

I thought there was some difference between peanuts and other types of nut - evidently not enough difference. I guess there must be several varieties of nut allergy - I'm sure one guy I know is allergic to most nuts, but not to peanuts. He reckon's it's something in the skin of the nut that sets his particularly allergy off, as apparently his mother tried him with well-peeled almonds, etc. on occasion without problems.

If I were a parent (and most 13-year-olds like me seem to be, if you believe the news), I'd rather my parents read Harry Potter than a hard-hitting exposé of drug abuse or similar. Also, the magic in Harry Potter is purely innocent fantasy. No virgins are sacrificed, and no people sell their immortal souls to Lucifer himself. Many fairy tales and children's books have revenge and death in them; Roald Dahl's books thrived on these themes. Magic, revenge and murder are nothing new in children's literature, so any 'read Harry Potter and have your young mind warped forever' stuff has no basis.

Note my typo in the above post; "...I'd rather my parents read Harry Potter..." should read "I'd rather my *children*n read Harry Potter".
I remain ever vigilant in my attempts to stop confusion due to my rantings.