Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 14:23:05 -0400
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu>
To: <wsfalist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Mr Potter, redux
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

This from yesterday's PW Daily:

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Ban Harry? Booksellers Pitch In the Fight for Beleaguered Wizard

Poor Harry Potter. As if it weren't hard enough to grow up surrounded
by Muggles, those same Muggles have been busy trying to get his books
out of the classroom and off library shelves. According to Beverley
Becker, associate director of the American Library Association's
Office for Intellectual Freedom, "Harry Potter is still the most
frequently challenged book around, starting in 1999." She expects it
to top the challenged charts again in 2003.

To help out the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression
(ABFFE) in their fight to preserve the rightful place of Harry Potter
on school shelves, Cammie Mannino owner of Halfway Down the Stairs in
Rochester, Mich., is encouraging booksellers to donate part of the
proceeds from the sales of the new book, Harry Potter and the Order of
the Phoenix, to ABFFE. "We're giving 20 percent of the first month's
sales to ABFFE, which means about $6 a book," Mannino told PW Daily.

"If you haven't already come up with a plan to promote Harry sales,
please give ABFFE another thought," she wrote recently on the
Association of Booksellers for Children ABC listserv. "They do a lot
of wonderful work and could really use any donations you can make."

Mannino has gotten a lot of good feedback since she began publicizing
the discount in her store newsletter. "One customer said to me,
'You're reserving Harry Potter and you're giving it to that group.
I'll get it from you.' That's who our customers are: good people with
values," said Mannino.

Betsey Detwiler, owner of Buttonwood Books & Toys in Hingham and
Cohasset, Mass., was one of the first to follow Mannino's lead. "When
I saw Cammie's letter, I thought: 'Boy. That's really great,'" she
said.

Some of Detwiler's staff also want to donate a part of the June sales
to local schools, which have been hard hit in Massachusetts, and the
bookseller worked out a compromise: customers can choose whether they
want 20% of the purchase price to go to the schools or to ABFFE.

What prompted Mannino and Detwiler to support ABFFE and Harry Potter
was actually a case of censorship in Arkansas. Last year, the
Cedarville, Ark., School Board overruled the local library committee
and forced schools to not display Harry Potter books in their
libraries and require students to have written permission from their
parents to read them.

Billy Ray Counts, a member of the library committee, and his wife Mary
Nell Counts sued the Cedarville School District on behalf of their
daughter, Dakota Counts. In early March, they filed a motion for
summary judgment to stop what they regard as an ongoing violation of
the First Amendment. ABFFE, ABC, the Association of American
Publishers, PEN American Center, writer Judy Blume, and ten other
organizations filed a brief of amici curae in support. "This is the
first court challenge to an effort to censor Harry Potter," notes
ABFFE president Chris Finan.

The 18-page brief states: "Cases like this one, involving the
censorship of a critically acclaimed book credited with motivating
thousands of children to read, are particularly egregious." The judge
has yet to rule on the motion, although Finan anticipates a decision
soon.--Judith Rosen