Friday, July 15, 2005

Reading Is Dangerous

We are just hours away from the release of the sixth installment of the "Harry Potter" series. This book may seem harmless to you, but every time your child turns a page she is in grave danger. Potter is a what is known as a gateway book. This prince will surely lead your child to move on to hard books by Tolkien or Barbara Kingsolver (your child may refer to these by their street names: "Ice T" and "Special K"). "My child doesn't have a problem,” you say; will you still say that when her room is filled with books and she has hocked your television to feed that habit. She's got a monkey on her back, and its not Curious George.

According to a recent study, by the American Association of Broadcasters, states that 65% of all children who read just one Harry Potter book become addicted to short fiction within a year. Page after page, novella after story, they wind up endless seeking to get high on reading. Never satisfied for long they hang around bookstores or spend hours trolling the dusty shelves of the library looking for a fix.

Reading is Fundamental, it is fundamentally dangerous. Treatment is available, but it all has to start with you being the parent saying, "No, you'll watch television and by god you will like it!"

Brought to you by the Partnership for a Thought Free America

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Being a Harry Potter addict myself, I must say that they are not 'short novels' as you would claim, each page is a full fledged drug that I inject into my veins.

The drugs get heavier with each new book in the series. The first starts out with an innocent 250 pages. Sounds innocent, but the latest novels give us 900 pages of black tar heroin.

I'm hooked, somebody help me!

Unknown said...

I feel your pain. I was hooked on phonics for years. I got clean, but then I fell into a bad addiction with short stories. Its like crack cocaine. They take just minutes to read, and then they are gone and your just left with that hunger. You can just hear that monkey on your back saying "start another, its only 20 pages....".

After waking up in the stacks of the library one morning, I had a moment of clarity. I was able to pull myself away from those book and through the power of television I broke the chain of addiction.

For 3 years, I've been book free. Thank god for "America's Funniest Animals..." Thank you Bob Saggat....