Hell's bells, I grew up reading comic books! And Big-Little books.

People like the good Dr. Fredric Wertham grossly underestimate the fundamental intelligence of kids. Just because Superman could fly and bullets bounced off his chest didn't mean I didn't have a pretty good idea of what the real world is like. It was just an enjoyable fantasy, and I knew it at the time, as did all the other kids I knew. In fact, my favorite costumed crime-fighter was Batman, because he didn't have super powers. He was just very good at what he did (not a bad ideal to strive for!). They weren't that much different from the Sunday "funnies," which my Dad used to read to my sisters and me. Sunday morning ritual.

The only time my mother wasn't too happy was when an uncle gave me a big stack of pulp magazines he had finished reading (I was maybe 11 at the time). Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, Planet Stories, etc. Other than Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in the Sunday funnies, this was my introduction to science fiction. Probably what concerned my mother more than anything else were the cover drawings of buxom, scantily clad females being menaced by bug-eyed monsters (CLICKY #1 or CLICKY #2). But these magazines contained early stories (some of which have since become "classics") by such people as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Edmond Hamilton, Arthur C. Clark, and others who have become regarded as the Olympic Gods among writers of science fiction.

Reading these things undoubtedly had a strong influence on my lifelong habit of reading, which still includes science fiction, but covers a wide variety of literature: fiction, classics and otherwise, non-fiction, the works. This is why I'm tickled to see that lots of kids are currently deeply into the Harry Potter books. These things are tomes, and the kids are wolfing them down. When they finish them, they'll undoubtedly go hunting for other stuff to read, just like I did.

And, of course, Dr. Wertham has his modern counterparts in the many folks who are shocked and appalled at the subject matter of the Harry Potter books. Witchcraft and wizardry. Oh, Horrors!!

Give a kid something that stirs his or her imagination, and you have a reader for life. That's a good thing!!

Don Firth