November 15, 2001 New Web Site Defends Harry Potter and Kids’ Free Speech As young readers around the country eagerly awaited the opening of the film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, a coalition of free expression groups announced, on November 13, the launch of a Web site dedicated to defending the free speech rights of kids, including the right to read the Harry Potter books. The new Web site--kidSPEAK! (www.kidspeakonline.org)--is the successor to Muggles for Harry Potter, a Web site created last year when objections over the depiction of witchcraft in the Potter books led some public schools to restrict their use. "kidSPEAK! will pick up where Muggles left off, expanding the fight against censorship of the Harry Potter books to include a defense of the hundreds of other books that are challenged every year because someone thinks they are 'harmful' to kids," Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE), told BTW. For the last two years, author J.K. Rowling's novels about the boy wizard have topped both the bestseller lists and the American Library Association's list of challenged titles, which included 646 books in 2000. Challenges to the Potter books have continued this year. In June, a library in Oskaloosa, Kansas, cancelled a reading program that involved the Potter books because of complaints. The most recent challenge to use of the Potter books in the schools occurred last month when a parent tried unsuccessfully to have them banned in Duval County, Florida. Earlier this year, several Harry Potter books were burned by the pastor of a church in western Pennsylvania. (Links to news stories describing these incidents can be found in the kidSPEAK! news section of the Web site.) kidSPEAK! is intended to serve primarily the middle school students who have rallied so strongly to the defense of the Harry Potter books, swelling the membership of Muggles for Harry Potter to over 18,000 in only a few months last year. "These kids showed they have a keen dislike for censorship," Finan said. "Our Web site is designed to inform them of the wide range of challenges to the First Amendment rights of kids, to give them a place to express themselves on the issue and to teach them how to fight back." In addition to ABFFE, the sponsors of the kidSPEAK! Web site are the Association of American Publishers, the Association of Booksellers for Children, the Children's Book Council, the Freedom to Read Foundation, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council of Teachers of English, PEN American Center, and People for the American Way Foundation. ABFFE is continuing to sell its Muggles for Harry Potter buttons in quantities of 100: 100 ($25); 200 ($40); and 300 ($50). To order online, go to www.abffe.com, or call ABFFE at (212) 587-4025. A Muggles button order form appears on the ABFFE website.   Topics: Internet, Free Expression,