Without the brave Hermione, it must be said, Harry would have been dead pretty early on. Hermione falters only once, when she first meets a troll who is planning to eat her; after that, she meets other monsters and evils with considerable aplomb. She outdoes her classmates in virtually every class, and far from trying to put her in her place, the teachers go out of their way to accommodate her lust for learning and to turn her into the most powerful, intelligent witch that she can be.

Schoefer has also chosen not to see one of the books' nicest touches: the (almost) solid friendship between two boys and a girl. (The friendship does stumble when Hermione's cat appears to have eaten Ron's pet rat, but this is understandable, and has nothing to do with Hermione being a girl.) And, in Schoefer's need to find sexism, she has ignored another wonderful touch: Harry and Ron accept Hermione Granger for exactly what she is -- an often annoying, extremely intelligent and extraordinarily brave and quick-witted girl. Just the sort of person to have around when you have to smuggle a forbidden baby dragon across school grounds.

Neither Hermione nor Ginny are among my favorite characters: That prize goes to the villainous Professor Snape and the marvelously silly Professor Trelawney. (Ms. Rowlings, if you're reading this, please bring Professor Trelawney back in the next books. Please.) In the end, it seems that Rowlings is guilty less of creating stereotypical female characters than of writing a book centering on a boy, one of whose friends happens to be a girl. But who says women must write about female characters?

Reading Schoefer's criticisms, I was reminded of one of the first sentences in the books, one of my favorites:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.

Of course, Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, by not holding with such nonsense, end up missing all of the joys of Harry's world: the foaming butterbeer, the paintings that move and talk and gossip with one another, the chance to step from an ordinary train platform through a wall and onto a marvelous red train that takes you to explore magic and adventure. Not to mention the chance to soar through the air on a broomstick.

Fortunately, Harry escapes his Muggle family every year at Hogwarts. With luck, his creator -- and her readers -- may be able to wave a wand and make all of the Muggle critics disappear.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"