She Turned Me Into a Newt

Thanks to Galleycat I've discovered that Forbes has created a special report on the publishing industry. Never assume that publishing news will bypass kidlit info, my friends. Sometimes that's where you get the choicest nuggets.

They featured a piece on Harry Potter book burnings recently that didn't seem to touch on anything new at first. Then I saw that it mentioned Ray Bradbury's take on the burning of Harry Potter. Regarding a pastor who was doing "cuttings" of the books:

"He [Taylor] doesn't know what witchcraft is," says Bradbury. "It's about wits. There's nothing wrong with the Potter books, because they're not promoting witchcraft. They're promoting being wise."

Nicely put. The mention of the Royal Library of Alexandria in the article seems a bit of a stretch but otherwise it's not a bad piece.