KEEP THAT WIZ KID ON THE PAGE Why Harry Potter movies are a dumb idea

When the Harry Potter movies start hitting the theaters in the not-too-distant future, it's my belief that parents should boycott them. If that sounds like a heresy, let me explain. Now that the initial hype surrounding the latest Harry Potter novel has subsided, we should all cheer the children who - in the era of video games and the Internet - have found a reason to practice the dying art of reading. J.

K. Rowling's Harry Potter books have brought many families closer together. Parents have started turning off the damned TV and actually begun sitting around the living rooms of America, reading to their kids. Literacy lives! My brother John and his wife, Christine, have created Harry Potter quizzes for their 5-year-old daughter, Molly. They read the boy wizard's adventures with Molly every night at bedtime. The night the latest Potter went on sale, Christine and Molly stood on line at the Bay Terrace branch of Barnes & Noble from 10:55 p.


m. to 12:30 a.

m. One 14-year-old who was standing on line told them her father was worried about her being out so late. The teenager had replied to her dad, "Wouldn't you rather know I was at a bookstore than shooting heroin?

" But once these books start turning up on screen, I worry that kids will simply stop reading them. Instead of standing in line outside of Barnes & Noble at all hours, they will line up outside movie theaters across the land. And before we know it, they'll be mobbing Blockbuster video stores. A few weeks ago, when the frenzy surrounding "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" swept the nation, Jay Leno joked that the kids in L.

A. stood on line, got their books, and were then disappointed when they took them home and discovered they didn't fit into their VCRs. I laughed. Darkly. Because Leno hit upon something I fear. It's that just when it seems kids are rediscovering the magic of words, the Potter movies will surely induce them to return to sitting passively in front of the boob tube. Once the movies are available on video, I fear that instead of parents reading a chapter of Potter with their kid at bedtime, they'll slap a Potter tape into the VCR in the kid's bedroom, kiss the kid goodnight, close the door, and go downstairs and watch "Survivor.

" Just when books start making an encouraging comeback in the lives of kids, Hollywood will slam the books closed. Instead of actively reading Potter under the covers with a flashlight at night, kids will sit in a dark theater during the day, getting fat on popcorn, candy and soda as they are spoon-fed a movie whose images have obviously been supplied by someone else. Once again, entertainment will supersede education. Sensation will replace imagination. Not one bit of grammar will be learned from a Potter movie. No kid will trace his finger across the letters it takes to spell the word "dungeon.

" The only new vocabulary words will be spoken and heard instead of read. No little mind will have to whir into overdrive to conjure the mystical world created by language instead of pictures. No kid will drift into dreamland with the images created by words dancing in his or her little head. Instead, there will be a phantasmagoric mega-million-dollar movie, with an elaborate and manipulative soundtrack telling kids what to feel and when to feel it. Startling special effects will replace cerebral fantasy. Worst of all, each entire Potter story will be received as a compact two-hour package instead of the thrilling, day-after-day active experience of reading a full-length book. No kid ever feels a sense of accomplishment from viewing a movie. But finishing the task of reading a book on one's own is a crucial triumph for a child. I will never forget how proud I was when I finished my very first Hardy Boys novel. If there had been VCRs and videotapes available, it's possible I'd never have read it. The trick is to get kids hooked on books before they're seduced by the movies. (There's an argument that movies often boost the sales of paperback books, but that is really an adult phenomenon.) It's no different from encouraging kids to play sports instead of merely watching them. The videotapes of today are the cop-out, shortcut equivalent of the Classic Comics and Cliffs Notes of my generation - a way of cheating your way out of reading the book. If you put a book and a video of the same story in front of a kid, you can bet most kids will push the play button on the VCR. But which one will make him smarter? After seeing a Harry Potter movie, kids will come away entertained, but not enlightened. Sight unseen, the upcoming Harry Potter movies deserve a new MPAA rating of D - for "duh.

" Or dollars. It's a shame. But when kids clamor to see the latest Harry Potter flick at a theater near you, at least we can remind them there's a bookshelf near them.