School board cements 'Potter' position

  May 12, 2006 at 3:52 AM ET
  Cheeser     Yahoo! News (via Gwinnett Daily Post)
  harry potter, gwinnett public schools, ban harry potter, banned books

A challenge to remove all of JK Rowling's Harry Potter books from the library shelves of Gwinnett Public Schools in Georgia has failed.

The school board there voted Thursday to keep the books available. It was the final action for a petition that began in November and culminated at an April clash in which nearly 100 people attended to voice their opinions.

Laura Mallory, a parent of three children at an elementary school in the district, argued that the books encouraged witchcraft and demonic activity. It was later revealed that she had never read the books. School board officials said the process for determining the series' suitability was unbiased, and they sought mainly to decide if the books were obscene or not.

Still, removing the books would have opened the school system to "ridicule by many of its citizens as well as citizens of the nation," Su Ellen Bray told the Gwinnett Daily Post.