ATLANTA - A suburban Atlanta mother pleaded Tuesday with a hearing officer for the state Board of Education to remove Harry Potter books from county school libraries, calling the popular fiction series an "evil" attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.

"They're not educationally suitable and have been shown to be harmful to some kids," said Laura Mallory, a mother of four from Loganville in Gwinnett County. She said the Harry Potter books promote the Wicca religion, and yet teachers do not assign other religious books such as the Bible as student reading.

Victoria Sweeny, an attorney representing the Gwinnett County Board of Education in Atlanta's eastern suburbs, said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban mainstays such as Macbeth and Cinderella.

"There's a mountain of evidence for keeping Harry Potter," she said, adding that the books don't support any particular religion but present instead universal themes of friendship and overcoming adversity.

Ms. Sweeny said parents, teachers and scholars have found them a good tool to stimulate children's imagination and encourage them to read.

Ms. Mallory, who first tried to get her son's elementary school to ban the books in August 2005, said Harry Potter is harmful to children who cannot tell reality from fantasy.

They try to imitate the character and cast spells on classmates, she said.

Referring to the recent rash of deadly assaults at schools, she said books that promote evil - as she claims the Potter ones do - help foster the kind of culture where school shootings happen. That wouldn't happen if students instead read the Bible, Ms. Mallory said.

The hearing officer presiding over the appeal will make a recommendation to the state board, which will then decide the case in December.

Wiccans consider themselves witches, pagans or neopagans, and say their religion is based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons.