What people also forget is that as parents it is our job to teach our kids reality from fantasy. In saying that, MY KIDS have a healthy idea of both. Because this world we now live in takes away IMAGINATION by producing toys that do it all for them, reading has become the only way to give them a release from the real world for a while. They need that or they will become an automation. I allowed my kids to read Harry Potter. They knew that it was pretend, they knew that the SPELLS were not real, they knew that they could play this in pretending to be Harry and company. It did not mean that they believed that if they said Aloa Mora the door would open. Now if they had been two or three, that might have been the case since two year olds and even some threes do not get the concept that its pretend. I am also a Christian. But I also read the books and felt they did not hurt my kids in any form. It was no worse than say Star Wars or Narnia which I do remind people that C.S. Lewis was an athiest for years before he became a Christian and those books do have magic in them. Does Lewis's works therefore show us how to be evil? Are his works any less harmful than Harry Potter? People need to stop and think.