Ooh, I don't think I'll step in the messy pile of the media violence debate. I got my fill of that last semester when I wrote a paper stating that the tie between media violence and real-life violence is a myth based on faulty studies, for my Argumentative Research Writing class. (You guys can probably guess my opinion from that.)<BR>As far as kids reading more than just Harry Potter, I've heard that kids are expanding their repertoires beyond that to include other fantasy stories (e.g. Redwall) and even other genres. The trick is to show them that not all books are boring. Once they see that J.K. Rowling wrote something fun and exciting, they'll start exploring to see who else did the same thing. One of my friends is a fourth grade teacher (at a school where HP's been banned, ironically), and the kids in her class that have read HP are psyched about finding other lit, too.<BR>On the topic of book vs. movie, I'm one of those purists (except in rare cases, like <B>Jurassic Park</B>) who always likes the book better. In the case of an especially well-done movie, like PJ's <B>Lord of the Rings</B> or <B>Where the Heart Is</B>, I'll sometimes say I like both best. LOTR is kind of an odd case, though, because there wasn't room in the movie for so much of what makes the book good...so maybe there I still favor book over movie. In any case, it's literally the best movie I've ever seen in the theater, and it is officially my favorite movie, besides.<BR>In the case of Harry Potter, I like the books best, hands-down. Witty narrative doesn't translate to the screen, and the narrative is half the delight of HP. That's one reason I probably wouldn't appreciate any screen interpretation of latter-era Charles Dickens books--without his narrative and descriptions, those stories would be way too depressing. Still, that said, I like the Harry Potter movie and I think it was well-done, given that they couldn't translate the narrative.
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