More on Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. (Letters to Editor).(Letter to the Editor)

I enjoyed your film review of The Fellowship of the Ring ("Rings Runs Circles Around Rowling" by Steve Bonta, January 28th issue). After seven or eight readings, I am convinced that The Lord of the Rings is the finest work of fantasy in 20th-century English literature. The same issue of THE NEW AMERICAN reviewed The Sorcerer's Stone. Although I did not see the film of the first of the J.K. Rowling series, I disagree with some of your observations.

At age 61, my enthusiasm for juvenile fiction is somewhat limited, but I was able to finish the first, and read part of the second "Potter," and I found that, rather than a handbook for the occult, as your several articles on the subject seem to imply, "Potter" is a slightly amusing satire of the British educational system. The books in question are at least valuable if they have lured a few children from the pernicious tube, and introduced them to the written word.

You may be gratified to learn that recently a group of local Christian activists, led, I believe, by Mennonites, organized a Harry Potter book-burning. The poet Heine had an interesting comment on such action:

"Dort, wo man Buecher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." ("Where one burns books, in the end, one will also burn people.")

ROBERT LANTZ

Timberville, Virginia

Steve Bonta did not suggest that Potter is a handbook for the occult. He did raise some red flags regarding ...