West Haven, CT - The popularity of the Harry Potter books have millions of children under its spell. But in West Haven, a book about wizardry has one mother anything but charmed.

A book in a West Haven elementary school has outraged a mother who claims it has exposed her young daughter to the occult. Friday night, she brought the book back to school to ask other parent’s opinion and to confront the principal.

Wizardology: The Book of the Secrets of Merlin, was checked out of West Haven’s Molloy Elementary School library by Cary Alonzo’s eight-year-old daughter.”Well, it has pentagrams in here. It has how to cast spells with actual spells to say and recite,” said Alonzo.

The book even has a few tarot cards. With the popularity of Harry Potter, this book is apparently also a hot item. Alonzo says it teaches an alternative religion that’s potentially dangerous.

“If I cannot go in this library and pick up a Bible or a Koran, I don’t think this should be there either,” said Alonzo.

Showing the book to other parents at Molloy’s movie night, she enlisted support.”Books like that shouldn’t be in the schools. If the parents want to get the books, they should get them on their own,” said Joe Vecellio of West Haven.

Others aren’t bothered a bit and say this kind of attention is a black eye to an otherwise outstanding school.

“Things like this put a bad name to the school where it’s a school where teachers work hard, the assistants work hard, the principal works hard,” said Rosemary Russo of West Haven.

“I looked at it, you know, I guess everybody’s different, there are some items that could be taken the wrong way,” said Molloy principal Steve Lopes.

Lopes says Wizardology was ordered through Scholastic Magazine and is a part of a series that did go through a selection process. It has now been pulled off the shelf and will be reviewed. That is not enough for Alonzo, who says if one slipped through, there may be others.

“At this level, they’re young, they’re very impressionable,” said Alonzo.

Source: WTNH

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 10th, 2007 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Activism & Politics, Opposing Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.