Academically respectable pokemon books? (was forum=28)Follow

The Pokemon phenomenon
SATURDAY MAILBOX
October 30, 1999

QUESTION RESPONSES

In October, we asked people to comment on a suit brought by West Coast parents against the manufacturer of Pokemon on the grounds that it promotes illegal gambling, and on the Pokemon craze in general: Can a holographic Charzard card really be worth more than Roger Clemens' rookie card, and does Pokemon have any educational value?

Pokemon cards are the creative outlet of the Nineties.
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If Leonardo DaVinci were alive today, he wouldn't be painting Mona Lisa; he'd be drawing Pokemon cards. Creative characters such as Jigglypuff, Harlot and Wartortle help to inspire today's youth to give birth to great works of art.

If your kids are motivated to wager large amounts of money on a Pocket Monster, you should be paying more attention to how you raise your children, not to the balderdash they buy.

The Rev. Aaron Brager

The Rev. Daniel Marshall, Baltimore

My daughters and I play the Pokemon trading card game. The game is cute -- and involves strategy and planning.

To play, one buys a deck and customizes it with cards from booster packs or from trades. Trading the cards with friends adds a social dimension, but this has caused complaints.

The booster packs have been denounced as gambling because some rare cards can be sold for more than the pack cost. The rarity mix also makes collecting a complete set tougher.

When the company that produces them prints enough cards for everyone, trading will be easier, and the rare cards will be too cheap to gamble on.

Erin J. Schram, Savage

Pokemon may provide some harmless lessons in trading, but these cards also cause harsh competition, disappointment, distraction from academic activities and expenditures that some families can ill afford.

The cards also promote materialistic values. Children learn to value possessing more and better cards than peers. Parents who supply the money and share in the competitive collecting reinforce this materialism.

If parents cannot say no and provide positive diversions when children are young, how will they cope when kids become teen-agers -- and must be stopped from using drugs, being sexually promiscuous and engaging in vandalism and violence?

Charlotte Considine, Glen Arm

The Pokemon card game involves strategizing, computation and calculation of risk vs. benefit -- along with patience, endurance and teamwork.

By buying and trading, the kids learn our system of enterprise. They learn supply and demand. They learn budgeting.