Ban This! - Arizona, You Hurt My Brain

There is absolutely no denying that the political climates of Connecticut and Arizona are about as opposite as Mitt and Obama in nearly every aspect of what could be construed as politics.  I have my political opinions and while I sit firmly on my fence of independence I can't help but laugh at some of the immense crazy coming out of my new home state.  There was a lot of crazy in my old home state but the Brewertopia I'm living in now is a whole different level of crazy.

See, Arizona has a hyperactive legislature and while that can pump out some shit that does make sense, like the Stupid Motorist Law, that a place like Connecticut is too much of a goddamn hippie to hold people responsible for their own idiocy to enact, we also get mind-numbing laws that make women perpetually pregnant and white-washes school curriculums.

Arizona is a border state.  There is nothing short of a cataclysmic tectonic event that'll change that.  That means there is a lot of ethnic diversity in this state, much to the chagrin of many people, especially the people in power.  Wherever you stand on the immigrant debate, this is a nation built by a melting pot of nationalities and while there is an illegal immigrant issue, especially here, that doesn't mean that ALL minorities are illegal and it doesn't mean that we should put the kibosh on ethnic diversity.  If you take a look at this list you'll be able to pick up a theme rather quickly.

Why?  Why is the state of Arizona going so far as to completely snuff out ethnic reading?  Arizona is squatting on a rather large plot of Indian and Mexican land.  I could get into how they were here first and the American settlers pushed them out and whatnot but that's not the argument (because, let's face it, imposing empires don't have a history of asking for things nicely).  White people are not native out here regardless of who took what from whom.  While I don't agree with encouraging illegal immigration I don't believe in discouraging ethnic education.

Arizona has this odd fear of a minority uprising and a usurpation of power found, obviously, in them reading books with words about non-whites in them.  HB 2281 expressly forbids "courses or classes that . . . are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group." THIS IS FOR REAL.  Read the bill and marvel at how far your eyes will cross.  The way this bill is being enforced is shutting down culturally diverse programs in schools and removing ethnic reading material from school classrooms and libraries for the sake of . . . what?  To promote equality in our schools?  By removing all culturally diverse texts from the rooms?  We learn about pilgrims in history until our damn eyes bleed.  As someone coming from New England that's a pretty poignant part of my area history (and of course the country's).  The settling of the American southwest would be a bit different.  Imagine living in New York City and not reading about the Harlem Renaissance because it was too far leaning towards one ethnicity.  No Langston Hughes for you.

No, I don't believe the overthrow of the US government should be taught in classrooms.  That's only slightly treasonous.  If this is to be believed that was one of the catalysts to the bill itself, the WAY some of these books were being taught.  Okay, so REFORM THE TEACHING.  Don't crush the entire program and remove the books because the teachers are supposedly sending bad messages.  And guys, if a book is removed from a classroom and thus removing students' access to it, it's banned.  If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's probably not a hippopotamus.

Sherman Alexie is no stranger to being banned in the fine state of Arizona and a channel has popped up on YouTube reading out books on Arizona's banned list.  No, I don't believe tax payer money should go to fund the upbringing of a generation of anarchists but at the same time if people are driving like shitbags you're not about to ban cars, are you?  No.  Have people learned nothing from banning books?  Have they not learned that banning them will only make them more desirable?  By removing them from schools those with enough want will just seek them out on their own?  History should not be removed from the classrooms and alternate views of history should be taught to get a more well-rounded view of the event in question.

This is rightly the second wave of the Civil Rights Movement (that Hannity article made that abundantly clear to me).  Voices are trying to be silenced.  Why?  How will that benefit anyone?  They'll find a way to speak one way or another.  Let history be taught.  Allow students access to all types of books suitable to their ages.  If the way these books are being taught is such a problem, how about keeping a closer eye on the teachers themselves instead of punishing the students?  All this looks like now is a sanitizing of the history of Arizona and of cultural diversity in general.  You're not oppressed or at a disadvantage.  Who's teaching you these things?  Seriously . . .  We're not all white WASPs bred from Europe.  To try and crush anything else is a bit of a disservice to, you know, a good chunk of the population.

Ban This! 2012

Holy crap.  Year four of Ban This!  (2009, 2010, 2011)  Out of the four years I've done this I've been able to actively participate in my own event twice.  In 2010 I was away on vacation for half the month and this year I'm making a meager 2,500 mile move across the country so needless to say I will be a bit pre-occupied.  Just not pre-occupied enough to forget Ban This!  No way.

Ban This! is me taking it upon myself to extend ALA's Banned Books Week for the entire month of September to bring awareness to all that is ridiculous about banning books.  That's not to say it can't be done throughout the year because banners never sleep but September seems like a good month to use as a focus what with the event at the end of the month and schools just starting up and all.  To me it just wouldn't feel like September without some mention of book bannings and challenges.

Nothing extensive is required of anyone that wants to participate in Ban This!  By attaching the badge to your site you're promising to promote banned and challenged books in some fashion throughout the month of September however you see fit.  In the past I've reviewed banned and challenged books, had authors guest post about banned books in general and, in some cases, their own banned books, waxed poetic about the wankery of book banning, among other things.  The point is to not be silenced, to not let the cranky, petulant few that insist on parenting EVERYONE rip books out of the hands of children (and adults!) for their own selfish reasons.

I'm a little upset that I need to step back from my own event this year but I know, as book bloggers, this is something we won't stay silent about, whether it's as part of Ban This! or just Banned Books Weeks in general.  Make posts, chat it up for #banthis, submit a read-out video, whatever.  Just be sure to be vocal.  Grab the button on the right and tell everyone to Ban This!  And leave me a note below just letting me know you're going to rock out with your banned books out in September.  (What'd you think I was going to say?  Perve.)

Some Final Words for Ban This!

This wraps it up for this year's Ban This!, along with Banned Books Week. Thank you to everyone who participated by posting about something banned and book-related this month and to all of the authors that stopped by and said a few words. The purpose of Ban This! is to just stick it to those that feel the need to parent the world and keep literature away from young, impressionable eyes. People need to be reminded that we're all different, we all function at different levels and we can all handle different things differently. Blanket statements are killer and I certainly don't want myself or my supposed future loinfruit wrapped up in them. Let me handle me and mine. You stick to yours. Thank you all for helping me prove that point.

So this year I'll leave you with a couple more articles that popped up in my PW scanning that I thought could add a little to the asshattery that is censorship. Enjoy!

Apparently a Russian priest feels that novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

and Vladimir Nabokov should be banned for justifying sexual perversions. I've never read ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE or LOLITA and while they sound a bit out there, they haven't persevered for this long because of their perverted nature. I wouldn't think someone so illicit would win a Nobel Peace Prize either. So I'm thinking someone's got something a little mixed up here. Granted this same church that spawned this guy claims that Russian women need to be wearing longer skirts and non-revealing clothing as well. Good luck with that, buddy.

While this article is more tongue in cheek, I'm wondering just how much of it is serious. Granted, some heinous reading choices forced upon children too early on could hinder reading but where are the parents teaching their children that there are better books in the world that they will probably like more? LORD OF THE FLIES should be stricken from reading lists? Some kids like that book. It's demented and sadistic and I'm sure a breath of fresh air compared to the likes of WUTHERING HEIGHTS for some. I guess it just goes to show how a difference of opinion can manifest itself. I had some terrible times with some books in school but others loved them. It doesn't mean I think they should be killed dead. While BEOWULF might be above the rang of some high school sophomores, others might get it. Unfortunately not every child can be catered to in school. That's where that extra reading comes in and allowing the kid to read something they actually WANT to. Funny concept, that balance.

Ban This! Author Bites - Janet Ruth Young

Janet talks about the craziness of books (just not in the way you might think) below and has offered up a signed copy of her own crazy book, THE BABYSITTER MURDERS, to give away as part of her Ban This! post! Just fill out the form at the end of her talk for your chance to win! Thanks so much, Janet, for the giveaway and for your awesome post!

When a Book Drives You Crazy

I write books about mental illness. My first, The Opposite of Music, is about a family dealing with the father’s life-threatening depression. The second, The Babysitter Murders, is about a babysitter who is tortured by thoughts of harming the child she cares for.

Lots of people (including some of my family members) choose not to read these books because they are too disturbing. I can understand this, and I accept it, as long as those close to me are supportive of my career overall. I would probably find my books disturbing too except that, as the writer, I know that most of the events in these stories are imaginary.

What I didn’t expect as I embarked on this career was that people would say my books had, essentially, driven them crazy. These readers fall into two categories. First are the readers who’ve had illnesses akin to those of the main characters, and who felt that the stories triggered symptoms. Some of these readers regretted having read the book or decided to stop reading halfway. I support that decision. Controlling their mental environment and filtering out messages they believe are harmful are important parts of these readers’ self-care.

Second were the readers with no history of mental illness who found themselves going a little crazy while living in the world of the book. Some readers with no history reported that they became depressed while reading The Opposite of Music. I felt a twinge of guilt at this, but I also felt thrilled. It meant that the book had achieved its goals: depicting how it feels day by day to have a seriously depressed relative, creating a story that grows more desperate with each page, and describing a family whose boundaries are so porous that when one member gets sick, they all get sick.

Maybe you’ve had this experience too, of feeling crazy when reading a book about mental illness. When I asked my friend John Hicks (who trained as a therapist) and my sister Diane Young (who trained as a librarian), they cited Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values as one that had made them feel mentally unstable. The main character is schizophrenic and has had shock treatments that altered his personality. John described the character as “slipping and spinning” in and out of reality.

This summer, I was driven crazy by a book: Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. It was recommended to me by my friend Joe, whose sweet, smiling demeanor often makes me forget that his book and play suggestions are unremittingly dark. Kevin is about a fifteen-year-old boy who commits a Columbine-like mass murder at his school. The story is told by his mother, who racks her conscience and memory to determine how responsible she is for the murders. You know from the start that Kevin will go on a killing spree. But the way he kills is so hideous, and the author’s descriptions so thorough, that I felt almost as traumatized as if I’d been present. At night I worried that Kevin had found me and gotten into my house, and that the sound of my hammock stand creaking was bodies propped up in the yard, and if I turned on the lights in my backyard at night I would find his victims.

So powerful was my horror that I sent this email to Diane, who was listening to the audiobook version at the same time.

To: Diane
From: Janet
Subject: Possibly stop reading Kevin?
If you're still fairly early in the book, you may want to just put it aside. I'm finishing it tonight, and it's definitely the most violent, gruesome, and sadistic book I've every read. A masterpiece, too, of course, but still. Some of the people on Goodreads (don't look there--possibly spoilers) say that Kevin gets into your head and never leaves, and I can see what they mean!

Diane wrote back:
Omigosh! I'm not afraid.

Later, I asked Diane what she had thought about our exchange. She said that she knew she wasn’t the kind of person who would have a problem with a book’s violence. In fact, she said, she had found the ending to Kevin to be full of hope. As some commenters on this blog have said, kids read to their emotional level and drop books that aren’t a good fit. This can be said of adult readers as well.

Would you call my e-mail a form of censorship? I would. Even despite the cute tone and the question mark in the subject heading, which makes “stop reading” a suggestion rather than a command. A couple of days later, when the creaking in the yard became my hammock again, I felt embarrassed about trying to step between my sister and what I consider one of the most important books I’ve ever read.

But my Kevin experience helps me better understand the parents, school systems, and libraries who censor. The book had aroused an instinct. I was upset and horrified, and I wanted to protect someone I loved from the same horror and upset. I meant well, just as most parents mean well. I wonder if any time we talk other readers out of book for reasons other than quality, we are banning that book one copy at a time. Can you, blog readers, think of times you’ve tried to take a book out of someone’s hands?

If books have the power to make readers crazy, then books are powerful indeed. And it can be delicious and edifying to live for a while in a character’s unstable mind. But readers have the right to say no to that experience and the right to say yes to an experience that another reader finds overwhelming. As authors, teachers, parents, and booklovers, let’s let readers choose how far and in what directions they will go.

Ban This! Author Bites - Josie Bloss

Sometimes it's all about the need for a book. Below, Josie waxes on that need. Thanks for contributing, Josie!

I have to be honest - I don't have many coherent thoughts about book banning beyond "It's so clearly stupid" and "OMG, I hope that one of my books get banned someday!"

Why would I want a clearly stupid thing to happen to one of my books? The truth is, I believe when a book gets banned it's proof that it did something right. That book reflected us back upon ourselves so precisely or poignantly or offensively that it caused some close-minded person somewhere to be so completely overwhelmed and afraid of the reality of human experience that they tried to keep it away from everyone else. For the common good, of course. I believe being banned means a writer did something spectacular.

As Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray, “The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame."

Rabid anti-book-banner/hopeful-future-banned-author that I am, I can see where this is debatable where children are concerned. Though I don't have any kids of my own, I understand the desire to keep children sheltered and safe, even if it’s played out in seemingly irrational ways.

And I can, at least, speak to my own experience. My parents wouldn't have been able to keep me away from any book even if they tried (which they didn't). As a result, my reading habits were basically feral. And yes, this meant I read The Prince of Tides when I was 12 and certainly too young to process such a mature story (though it became and remains one of my favorite books). It also meant I spent a whole summer devouring the entire V.C. Andrews oeuvre, and another summer swapping romance novels with my stepsister, and another summer hiding under the covers with some very dark horror stories that still creep me out to this day.

I was (and still am) drawn to those sorts of books - the stories that highlight the best and worst of humanity, the more extreme the better. Back then, I was trying to grow up, trying to get a grasp on the world and my place in it. I had emotions and moods in excess, as most teenagers do. And what I needed were books that reflected what I was feeling - anger and elation and depression and first love, the heights of joy and the depths of isolation and everything in between. I needed to know that I wasn’t alone, and that's what books gave me.

I feel like I’m still growing up, in fact, and I still sometimes need that sort of mirror to know that I’m not alone.

So that's why I react so badly when people try to tell teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood, what they can and can't read. Again, I suppose I can understand individual parents making entertainment decisions for their own children based on their family culture (though if those parents think they can protect their kids from every scary thing in the world, they're sadly mistaken), but I will never understand trying to take a book away from every teenager. I can't fathom the hubris of setting yourself up as a judge and jury for what is appropriate for everyone at any age.

Personally, I doubt anyone was made into a well-rounded and empathetic adult while covered in bubble-wrap and rainbows. I believe that being an adult, being a human, means recognizing the world is often a horribly dark and unfair place, filled with lots of people who think and do things differently than you. Trying to keep those facts out of the hands of teenagers, who need the truth in order to grow up, is one of the most counter-productive things I can imagine a society doing to its young people.

My next book, Faking Faith, is about a girl who becomes fascinated with a fundamentalist culture that has eliminated virtually all choices. After screwing up and going through some terrible experiences, Dylan wonders if this sheltered world where everyone follows a defined, protected and rigid path might have the answers. However, nothing is as it seems and Dylan is forced to confront some hard truths about life, and to grow up a lot as a result. If Faking Faith helps one reader feel less alone in the world, then I’ve done my job as a writer.

But if it gets banned somewhere, I’m throwing a party.

Some Banned Books Tidbits

Got a couple articles here that I think you all might get a kick out of.

First up, after 105 years on the banned list, EVE'S DIARY by Mark Twain

has made it back to the shelves in the Charlton Public Library in Charlton, Massachusetts. Better late than never, right? EVE'S DIARY is a retelling of the Garden of Eden story through the eyes of Eve. Originally banned due to it's lurid drawings (boobies!), in honor of Banned Books Week, the book was dusted off and brought back out for public viewing, simply because those images are tame compared to what we as the public see on a daily basis. Quite right. I'm wondering just how hard core the images have to be now to render a good ol' fashioned banning.

Next, the repeal of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE's insipid ban from the Vonnegut Library (I'm wondering if the banners even saw the irony in that) ended up being pretty half assed. The book, still deemed far too inappropriate for the yoots (<--10 points for reference), is held in a locked down secure location, entombed behind 7 foot thick cement walls and infrared laser beams ready to burn your eyes out if you happen to look at it without your parents' permission. Or maybe not, but the deal is the book is available only if a kid's parent physically comes down to the library to take it out for them. As if some kind of permission slip wasn't damning enough. Mom's gotta come get it for you. Yeah, that's unbanned. O_o

Last but not least, The Uprise Books Project is all about getting banned and challenged books into the hands of underprivileged middle and high school students. Their thought process is hopefully the notion that someone else is saying these books are bad will spurn interest in reading them. Considering teens have a tendency of doing the exact opposite of what adults tell them, that's a pretty good rationale. You can donate funds and allocate them to your favorite banned book or just give funds for the greater good. So if you've got some spare change, why not give a little?

Ban This! Author Bites - Ellen Hopkins

It's rough being the most banned author in 2010. Below Ellen talks about her status and to stuff it if you don't like it. Thanks for contributing, Ellen!

On The Brink of Another Banned Books Week

So, this year, approaching Banned Books Week, I find myself with a new distinction—the most challenged author in 2010. If you consider the seven novels I have on bookshelves (eight as of this week, but not in 2010), maybe that’s not so surprising. The ALA website lists the top reasons for book challenges. In this order: sexual content, unsuited to age group, offensive language, violence, homosexuality, occult, drugs. Okay, you will find some of these things in my books. But the bigger issue is, you will also find them in real life. I don’t write fairytales.

“Unsuited to age group” is such a subjective complaint, I won’t even comment on it, except to repeat what I’ve often said: When it comes to books, what’s “too much” for one person in any age group is absolutely necessary for another. IMHO, that category should be excised from the checklist. It’s meaningless. Let’s move on. As for “offensive” language, which words, exactly, and offensive to whom? The f-bomb doesn’t offend me, but terming all Muslims terrorists does. Again, way too subjective. Let’s move on.

Sexual content. Yep, it’s in my books because teens have sex, with or without love involved. They think about sex. They consider whether or not to have sex. They take sex, they give sex, sometimes too easily. Ditto drugs. They see them. They consider whether or not to do them, often pressured by peers or love interests. Abstinence-only education is a dismal failure. What works is open communication, often spearheaded by books that illustrate the downside of bad choices. But only if those books reflect reality, not some sanitized version of it. Lying by omission is still lying. Young people have highly active bullshit meters. (Offended? Tough.) If you lie to them once, they won’t believe you next time. Respect them enough to give them the truth, which can only influence their decisions positively.

I don’t get into the occult much. Violence, yes, in the form of physical or sexual abuse, which too many young people face. I want them to understand they have to speak up, sooner rather than later. I want to give them their voice. Homosexuality? Uh, yeah. Because there are gay people walking around in every school and every coffee shop and every church and every grocery store. They are part of our society, and our humanity. And they deserve to be represented in books as much as straight people do. Making them disappear out of books will not make them disappear. They are, and that’s that. Let’s move on.

If you find my books offensive, my question to you is—do you find real life offensive? Teens live in the real world. You can’t scrub that. And, no matter how many times you challenge me, you can’t scrub my books either. Perhaps the energy you expend trying to do that would be better spent trying to excise abuse and violence and bigotry from the very real world where your kids live.

Banned Books Week's Virtual Read-Out!

In case you haven't heard, there's a read-out going on! Through the end of Banned Books Week, October 1st, you can upload a video of you reading from your favorite banned book to the Banned Books Week's YouTube Channel and join in a slew of other people in sticking it to book banners. You can find out more information, including instructions on how to upload to the channel, here.

I mentioned last month that I might be participating but ultimately I'm going to pass on this, although I wish I could do my thing for it. Mainly I'm passing because I don't have the proper equipment to do a vlog. I only have the recorder on my digital camera and that kind of sucks for things like this. Plus I'm really self conscious on screen like that. As you may have noticed, I'm not big on vlogs. Nevermind the fact that I've been doing Ban This! all month and sticking it to them banners the entire time. So I feel I'm doing my part to spread the banned books love this year.

But I encourage those of you that can to participate in the read out and join all the others that have uploaded already. Stick it to book banners!

Ban This! Author Bites - Mari Mancusi

In light of the more recent pre-publication book censoring going on, I'm glad Mari decided to take a stab at a not-often talked-about aspect of book banning and censoring. Thanks for contributing, Mari!

My books, up until this point, have never been challenged or banned. But that doesn't mean I haven't been censored. But my censoring happened at the editorial level. As in--the things that were objectionable were taken out before the book ever reached store shelves. Few people ever talk about this kind of censoring, but it does happen. The reason? Because publishers want to sell books to the school and library market.

A few years back, I wrote a tween novel that took place in school setting and there were several teacher characters. As a daughter of two teachers, I grew up knowing that teachers aren't always the cardboard cutout paragons of virtue they appear to be when standing in the front of the classroom. They're adults. They drink, they smoke, they go out and they even have...gasp...lives outside of school! All perfectly legal, of course. But not something they necessarily want to share with their students.

In a deleted scene, my heroine flees to the bathroom, to escape some pretty awful bullying. There, she meets one of her teachers, who's sneaking a smoke, and they have a conversation. But I was told that the smoking needed to be deleted, because it didn't paint the teacher in a positive light.

The teacher was an adult. Smoking in this country (at least for now!) is still perfectly legal for adults. I didn't have her offer a cigarette to her student. I didn't glamorize the smoking (in fact, she laments that she should quit.) But I needed to take it out of the novel because the publisher didn't want to alienate the school and library market.

In another section, one of the teachers (who's the football coach and an overall jerk) mutters under his breath, "I'm too hung-over for this" when dealing with a difficult student situation. Again, I was asked to delete it.

I don't blame the publisher--they are running a business and that business is selling books. If they feel these kinds of things could alienate a large section of their market, well, then it's in their best interest to take them out. And because neither passage was necessary to tell the story, I agreed to do so.


But what that wasn't the case? What if we needed Mrs. Reilly to smoke to show something important about her character? What if we needed the male teacher to be hung-over to illustrate why he acted like he did? Would the objectionable content be permitted to stay in? Or would the intent of the scene or book have to be compromised?

It's a scary thought. And one I don't think most people consider when talking about banned books. We talk about books that are banned or challenged after publication--but at least those books are available to read if someone were to seek them out. The other books--the books censored before publication--well, those are lost forever.

Ban This! Author Bites - Anne Spollen

On this first day of the official Banned Books Week, Anne Spollen talks about a sneaky kind of book banning. Thanks for contributing, Anne!

“Adam was but human – this explains it all. He did not want
the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was
forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then
he would have eaten the serpent.”

– Mark Twain

Whenever I hear of books being banned, I am absolutely thrilled. I am beside myself with joy. It’s the same feeling I get when I walk past a bookstore and see a long line or when Amazon runs out of copies of a title.

By banning books, people are speaking my language. They are telling me exactly what I want to hear: that books have power, that they still matter. And that’s something I don’t hear very often.

When I tell people I would love to quit my job and just write all the time, they look at me and say what you‘ve probably heard time and again, “You want to write books? Yeah, but who reads any more? Books are just about extinct. Publishing. Heh. Now there’s a dying art.”

Well, apparently not. Enough people read to make books targets. People ban books because they are perceived as dangerous. Books are ideas. They cause change by broadening our world, our beliefs, by touching us. That doesn’t sound like a bad thing, now does it? Problem is with the word “change” -- change means deviating from the status quo and most books are banned because they upset that comfy status quo.

The type of books that are banned generally deal with sex, the occult, the paranormal, mental illness -- basically any themes that are not squeaky clean traditional. And I think most of us object to blatant banning of books and we all pretty much ignore the parent who stands up at the board meeting and hollers about Harry Potter being against Christian values. But there are more subtle ways to ban books that we have to watch out for.

I used to teach English in a school where the oldest children were fourteen. As one of two English teachers, I worked very closely with the librarian. In fact, we team taught some lessons. And we both became familiar with a small group of parents who consistently reviewed books in that library and consistently asked us to remove books dealing with frank discussions of adolescent sexual development.

Well, no, we told them. We reminded them of the guarantee of freedom of speech. We reminded them that children had to learn to make choices regarding their reading material. Did we have to remind them that we had ordered those books as a means of comforting their children as their bodies began undergoing puberty? And who among us doesn’t need comfort during that time?
They responded by going to the school board and complaining. They weren’t noisy or obnoxious; they were politely persistent. They believed that children, their children specifically, most of them already in puberty, would be harmed by reading about the very processes their bodies were undergoing.

The result? We didn’t remove the books, but signed permission slips were required in order for the children to borrow them. You can imagine how many kids wanted to bring home that permission slip for mom to sign and how many kids wanted to take out books on that “special” shelf. Indirectly, those books were banned.

Puberty, however, continued.

You don’t need bonfires or a fascist regime to attempt to control ideas: you only need a few fear-addled folks. Books are our unflinching mirrors: they show us as we are, warts and all. Books can serve as guides to understanding those warts. The power of the written word has always been to connect us through our experiences. And that‘s the kind of power that should never instigate fear.

Ban This! Author Bites - Jennifer Laurens

Book ratings equal bigger sales to Jennifer Laurens! Read on to find out her take on it. Thanks for contributing, Jennifer!

Student. Teacher. Forbidden. Love.

The line comes from one of my Twitter teasers I post along with a link to Amazon for my YA novel, A Season of Eden. You can guess from the teaser what the book is about. The book isn’t banned. As an indie author I’m not worthy of the national attention deemed ‘bannable’ by librarians and whoever else decides these things. Lucky for me. I’m all right with that. I like being indie for that and a lot of other reasons.

I realize there are plenty of people out there who’d gasp and shudder at the idea of a student/teacher relationship. When I used to read reviews, I read one complaint about A Season of Eden, something along the lines of “this book shouldn’t even be out there!” Again, one of the beauties of being indie—no one can DO anything about the book because it’s not part of the crowd.

I may not be directly affected by censorship but I wholly believe in a book rating system. Just like the movies, books should be rated G, PG, PG-13, R and X. That’d shake up things a bit. You’re browsing the aisles of the bookstore ( if there are any left by the time the ereader revolution settles ) and you see sealed books ( because they’re rated X – and- NOOO peaking allowed! ) The entire romance aisle would be X rated or in some far-off corner of shame. What would a rating system do to the BUYING experience when you carry your book with the bold E ( for erotica ) or X or R rating on the cover up to the counter? Would it make you think before buying? Would readers do more buying online?

I think a ratings system would enhance interest in titles just like it did for music. Who can forget Tipper Gore trying to hold back the ocean of progress with ratings for music? Ratings haven’t done much to change the music industry ( there are just as many crass, foul-mouthed singers as there have always been singing about sex, drugs and whatever else they want to sing about in the form of self expression ) so I doubt a ratings system would change anything about what’s being written. A book rating system might educate some clueless parents about what their kids are reading.

If there was a ratings system, would that mean schools could only carry books with age appropriate ratings for the school? I could see that happening. What if booksellers refused to sell books to kids under the age of 13 if the ratings were like that of movies?

Somehow, I doubt kids would let that stop them.

A ratings system would most likely ADD to book sales in the end. But none of this matters to me. I write what I want to write without being caught in the vision of the all-seeing eye of whoever decides a book should or shouldn’t be banned.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? Why do they have so much power? Who died and made them King/Queen of anything? ( love Sara Barielles )

Last I checked, there was only One who deserves that kind of notice.

Let’s tilt their thrones. Let’s knock their crowns off. A ratings system would take away some of that stodgy power and ( gasp ) put the decision making back into the minds of the reading public where it should be.

Read and let read -

Jennifer Laurens

Ban This! Author Bites - Cinda Williams Chima

Cinda Williams Chima says let her parent her own children and you stick to parenting yours. I agree. Thanks for contributing, Cinda!

Books changed my life.

Through childhood and adolescence, my mother would take me to the library and I would check out armloads of books. At home, her shelves were open to me—a combination of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, murder mysteries, James Bond thrillers and historical novels, in addition to what she borrowed from the library.

My older brother, too, had books—mostly science fiction and fantasy—that he’d let me borrow. When we visited my aunt and grandmother, I would read stacks of True Story and True Confession magazines, with the occasional romance thrown in. Not all of it was good, but all of it made me a better reader.

We didn’t have much money. Our vacations were fishing trips to Canada. Books were a doorway into new worlds for a girl who wanted to cross other borders. Books were also a refuge for me when I needed it—when we moved out of state, leaving all my friends behind, and when my mother was seriously ill.

My mother never restricted what I read. She never saw danger between the covers of a book—only opportunities to learn about the world in a safe way. That was her view, though other parents might think differently.

As my reading level improved, I encountered content I didn’t understand. For instance I couldn’t figure out why people were always going to bed together. I never wanted to go to bed—I preferred to stay up and read.

If I asked my mother, sometimes she would offer a brief explanation, and sometimes she would suggest another book I might enjoy. Or I would put it aside myself. Readers and writers are partners in story—and books can be read on many different levels.

There was very little literature targeted at young adults in those days, so by junior high and high school, I was reading adult books mostly—Michener and Mary Stewart and Marion Zimmer Bradley and Tolkien and John Jacques and hundreds of authors whose names I can’t remember. Most of it was fairly tame—but not all.

In high school, my teacher caught me reading Valley of the Dolls in Problems of Democracy class—a book that was highly controversial back in the day. I had to go beg for it back, because it belonged to a friend of my mother’s.

Somehow, I survived Valley of the Dolls, True Confessions, and the rest. I got into my share of trouble as a teenager. Like generations of adolescents before me, I was influenced by peers, by hormones, and by the adolescent belief that I was indestructible.

I can’t think of one time that I made a bad decision based on something I read in a book.
I had friends who had complicated lives—alcoholic fathers, divorced parents, abuse situations. They felt so alone—as if they were the only teens in the world that weren’t living a sitcom life. It would have helped tremendously if they could have found themselves in story.

I went on to become a first generation college graduate, a health professional, a college professor, an author.

I’m a parent myself, though my boys are grown now. When they were teenagers, I envied their access to a huge range of books written just for them. Books about diverse topics and diverse people. We loved talking about books together. My older son, especially, read far above his grade level. There were times I had to lobby for him so he could gain access to richer, more challenging books.

Nobody considers the adult audience for books to be homogeneous. The teen reading audience is just as diverse in terms of what individuals can handle. It is disrespectful and condescending to limit all teens to literature that offends nobody.

As a parent, I honor the right of parents to monitor and participate in the book choices their children make. And I ask them to honor my choices as well. I don’t want other parents and gatekeepers making that decision for me—or my children.

Cinda Williams Chima has authored two best-selling fantasy series: The Heir Chronicles (The Warrior Heir, The Wizard Heir, The Dragon Heir) with two books forthcoming; and the Seven Realms series (The Demon King, The Exiled Queen, and the newly-released The Gray Wolf Throne) with more forthcoming. You can find information about her tour for The Gray Wolf Throne and other upcoming events here http://cindachima.com/Events/events.htm.
More information and excerpts from each book are available on her website, www.cindachima.com. Help for writers can be found under Resources/Tips for Writers, including a document called, “Getting Started in Writing for Teens.”

Chima blogs at http://cindachima.blogspot.com/, where you’ll find rants, posts on the craft of writing, and news. Visit her Seven Realms http://www.facebook.com/Seven.Realms and Heir Chronicles http://www.facebook.com/Heir.Chronicles pages on Facebook.

Ban This! Author Bites - Holly Schindler

Below Holly takes a look at the danger of books . . . thanks for contributing, Holly!

Book banning recently hit disturbingly close to home when Republic, Missouri chose to ban Vonnegut’s SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE and Ockler’s TWENTY BOY SUMMER from the school library. Shortly thereafter, another disturbing story broke: a female student in Republic reported a sexual assault by another student, only to be disbelieved, suspended, even forced to apologize. When allowed to return to school, she reported a second assault; DNA from a rape kit confirmed an attack did in fact take place, and matched the boy the female student identified after the first alleged attack.

Okay, you’re saying. This story of sexual assault is disgusting. It’s horrific. It’s infuriating beyond all measure. Why is it being mentioned in a post about book banning?
Republic residents themselves linked the two events, as they organized a protest to the recent events, crying out, “Ban rape, not books.”

Which brings up an interesting question: just how dangerous are books?

We send our students to school believing they’ll be safe…but are books something that any teenager really needs protection from? As a society, we tell our teenagers that they are, in many ways, ready to lead an adult life. At sixteen, we put car keys in their hands. At eighteen, we allow them to enlist in the military. Are the ideas present in any book more dangerous than a vehicle? More dangerous than a gun, war?

I suppose the case could be made for the power of ideas. (That ideas are what lead to horrors like war…) But at eighteen, we put voter ID cards in teens’ hands. We tell them that they’re ready to help make decisions that shape our future as a country—but they need shielding from the concepts in works of literature?

Of course, as an author, I’m against banning of any book from any facility. Period. I do not support the removal of a book from any shelf. But I believe YA literature is important because it depicts characters who are navigating tough, adult situations for the first time—as are YA readers. YA characters are flawed, and while they stumble along the way, in the end, they succeed—they inspire readers to have faith that they will succeed, as well. That they, too, will find their place in this world.

Dangerous? Not in my book…

Ban This! Author Bites - Julie Chibbaro

Julie keeps it short and sweet and reminds us that without real writing, there'd be no history. Thanks for contributing, Julie!

Banning Literature Sucks – Julie Chibbaro

Both these comments appeared for my first book Redemption on the Barnes & Noble site:

“a terrible book!
This book was well written and placed in an interesting time period with a great plot. However, I would not recommned it to anyone unless they do not mind extreme profanity and colorful descriptions of sex. I stopped reading this book about halfway through. The descriptions of how a man in the story is raping a woman are sickening. I would not recommned this book to anyone. I can't believe that people read, let alone write, books like this these days.” -- Anonymous

AND

“A Classic for everyone to read!
This book was an amazing classic tale of one girls courageous fight to survive her journey through the new world. It has very ironic twists that you won't want to miss, a page turner and an evolving romance!” -- Anonymous

So, wait a minute, which one is it? Terrible, or a classic? I didn’t even know there was sex and profanity in my novel! I mean, not really, I mean, not much. Maybe I need to reread it. Should it be banned? Aren’t a lot of the classics banned? I was trying to stay faithful to the time period and characters in the book. Wouldn’t a pirate curse? Did females not get raped in the 1500s? So, like, as writers, should we only write nice? But then no one will read us ‘cause we’re not being faithful to reality. We’re not reflecting life as it is, which is our job – to write the essence of life so readers, and we, can understand it better. Without Huck Finn, we couldn’t, 100 years later, understand the relationship between a small white boy and an older black man. Without Holden, we wouldn’t get the misery of a kid after a war, whose life is in shambles. We would forget. And to me, a historical novelist, that would be the worst travesty of all.

Ban This! Author Bites - Sean Beaudoin

I wrote the essay below the last time I had a taste for a serious banning. It went away for a while, but like all bad habits, my appetite has been resurrected. I find that I want to be banned now more than ever. So it is with great pleasure that I accepted Lit Bites’ offer to dust this plea/rant/dare off and run it again, with new and improved material sandwiched between prior genius. To that end, please read this slowly, and with due attention. If you care about me at all--even a little bit--I’m sure by the end you will consider tossing me (in the form of crates of my books purchased at full cover price) out into the streets and duly soaking them with whatever accelerant is at hand, before gracing them with a kiss of cleansing flame.

I thank both you and the strong smell of purloined kerosene in advance.

Yours in pyromaniacal suppression of thought,

Sean Beaudoin.

Please ban my book. Please? Hey, I'm fine if you choose any of the three of them. Maybe Going Nowhere Faster because between flatulence jokes lies a hidden Marxist subtext plunging us all one step closer toward socialized medicine. Or maybe Fade To Blue because some enterprising Wiccan chick just discovered if you read chapter six backwards a message from the Lord Of Darkness (Brodie Jenner) is revealed. Or even the otherwise squeaky clean and loveable You Killed Wesley Payne, because your friends keep reading it in the caf and choking with laughter on their French fries and you’re just too lazy to learn the Heimlich Maneuver. 



Listen, at this point, if your book hasn't been banned somewhere in the world, you're probably not trying very hard. If Salman Rushdie hadn't had the old fatwa slapped on him, he never would have become a punch line on Seinfeld, let alone a household name. And if a generation of fellow authors and politicians had not refused to stand by his side out of fear and ignorance, failing to state in public en masse that The Satanic Verses had as much right to be proudly displayed in any bookstore window as The Idiot, and, further, had not disgracefully allowed even the whisper of the notion that any work of literature “deserved” condemnation by a small and fanatical group for deigning to wrestle with dangerous ideas—well, then Mr. Rushdie would still be a creaky academic with good reviews and mediocre sales. Hey, cowering fear and threats of death are a proven unit-mover! In fact, being banned is the new biceps tattoo and chopped Harley of cultural outlaw-ism. And I, for one, want in on this gang. I want to join the ranks of George Orwell, S.E. Hinton, Charles Bukowski, Jim Carroll, Ray Bradbury, Allen Ginsburg, Judy Blume, William Burroughs, D.H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Kurt Vonnegut, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. We can all hang out, drink gallons of black coffee, quote Rimbaud at terrified locals, and roar around town in our matching leather pants. Softball teams? Facebook groups? Lawnmower collector’s symposiums? Forget it, baby. This author wants to run with the banned, tongue hanging out, arms up like extras from the Thriller video, looking for action.


And yes, where you have a burned book, a banned book, or just a slyly omitted “we don’t carry that” book you can be sure you have something worth reading.


The thing that doesn't seem to have sunk in yet for the What Is Appropriate Crowd, is that the forces of banning always lose. Always. If it takes six months or twenty years, they are inevitably revealed as prudish, reactionary, closed-minded, finger-sniffing, mayonnaise-eating, and just outright boring. The forces for censorship invariably have an agenda for restricting art that is wholly different than their stated intent--namely easing their personal fears or increasing their economic gain. It is rarely because the work itself is too dangerous. There's no such thing as dangerous art. It's easy to forget, after all, that when Richard Strauss' opera Salome was first performed in 1905, the audience TORE DOWN THE OPERA HALL because they were so scandalized. Now, Salome is used as the background music for dental exams and Flo-nase commercials. There is nothing at all that can be written, from de Sade to Kathy Acker, that is scarier than someone telling you that you can't read it. And there is nothing more stunting than some billion dollar hype-machine paper-thin novel being pushed down your throat and being told “here is something that’s okay.”

And then there’s sex. Sex! In a world where a six year old, with an already practiced click, can evade any parental controls and view the most graphic acts imaginable, is it really possible that something can be written that is too salacious to be read? Please. Everyone knows that sex is impossible to write about, and even good authors fall to their knees in a welter of clichés and maudlin prose as soon as their characters even consider dropping trou, let alone doing something once they have. The best abstinence program you could ever come up with would be forcing people to read most authors at their libidinal worst. Or even best.



A modern offshoot of banning is Oprah-ization. Just ask Jonathan Franzen. Of course, Big O's imperial nod toward The Corrections made him an unlikely celebrity and wealthy man, but it seems to have also handcuffed him to some degree as an author. And no matter what other books he pens—brilliant or otherwise—he has been permanently placed in the realm of pop artifact. There are some things worse than being reviled, and maybe being loved too strenuously is one of them. 



Of course, other books tend to want to ban themselves. Like the latest remaindered tomes from Ann Coulter or Michael Moore, which fill the national consciousness with something legitimately distasteful: rants that are too stridently mean, too manipulative, too fact-malleable, and too cynically calculated to divide. But we need to protect books like these as much or more than Roth's or Nabokov's. The easiest targets tend to go quietly, but once they're gone, the circle of moronicism draws tighter around those that are actually worth fighting for.



And as the line between high and low culture shrinks ever further, to the point that Paris Bieber is as well known a fictional character as Holden Caulfield or Doctor Benway, it becomes harder and harder to find a subject matter that shocks, offends, or even just dribbles off into tedium. And while Janet Jackson baring her décolletage on national television was decried as the final blow to decency, every great book ever written has passages in it which would cause the very same contextually challenged whistle-blowers to demand a bonfire in the streets. More likely, book banning lives with us now in a more insidious form: the quiet refusal to stock library shelves. Or an unwillingness to take on a fervent school board by assigning a controversial book. Banning is too easy to fight. Indifference is a much more difficult foe.



So ban me! Now! Soak down You Killed Wesley Payne with lighter fluid and hit your Zippo! I dare you.

Please?

Thanks for contributing, Sean!

Censoring Books Before They're Even Books

A couple months back I wrote a post about diversifying YA and how I don't set out to actively diversify my reading. If the story's good, I don't care who the characters want to bed, I don't care what color they are, I'm going to read it. I find it absurd that as readers, we need to actively seek out diverse reading material. It should just be there for us, for US to make the decision whether we want to read it or not. I then made a point that that decision is already being made for us with things like whitewashed covers. Publishers are assuming that, with the greater reading public being white, readers wouldn't want to read books with non-whites on the cover. Note the word ass/u/me.

Lo and behold, our reading decisions are being made for us even at the agent level. Some authors have come forward and stated that an agent tried to straighten up their manuscript. Basically, he or she wanted to take the book on, but only after removing the gay protagonist who's story it was. Of course, not all agents are doing this. Kristin Nelson was quick to say that she found that kind of behavior appalling and Nelson Literary Agency was open to any YA story, regardless of the sexual orientation or skin color of the characters.

So I ask this: for those agents that are actively trying to WASP up YA literature, why the hell are you doing it? Why are you actively removing our reading choices? Why does everything have to always be all nice and white and straight and Westboro Baptist Church in the reading world?

People come in all colors, sizes, creeds and in a variety of sexual orientations. Teens have a hard enough time coping with who they are. By trying to eliminate certain people from fiction because they're gay or Hispanic or a gay Hispanic, what kind of message is that sending to the real gay Hispanics out there? It says "you are not worth knowing so do us all a favor and disappear." Good message. Why don't you just hand them the razors while you're at it?

It's bad enough to have psycho as shit book banners trying to rip the already eclectic mix of YA reading material off of the shelves because it's far too torturous for their widdle Bwilly's eyes to read. But to sanitize our reading before it even gets to us? To not only whitewash but de-gay it? What decade is it, exactly? This might be a hard pill to swallow but gay isn't a disease that doesn't set in until you're an adult. Gay is a trait a person is born with just like blue eyes, brown hair or being straight. It's not a choice, it's not a lifestyle decision. It is an is.

This is like getting a peek behind the curtain to see a twerpy Wizard of Oz pulling the big bad strings. Don't push fantastic authors away or offer them ultimatums because they have un-white, un-straight characters in their stories. How about the publishing industry, all the steps between the author and us, take an active approach in giving us choices and letting us decide if we can handle those two dudes kissing in that YA fantasy novel. Chances are we'll be just fine about it. Just don't remove that choice entirely. Don't censor the authors and then underestimate what it is we want to read. Let us decide that. And let us prove to you that you really need to stop that sanitizing horseshit. It's old. Like 1950s old. No one's going to be shocked out of their pearls for reading about them gays.

Don't assume gay/black/Hispanic/Asian/lesbian/bisexual, transgendered/Mexican doesn't sell when you're not even testing the waters to see if that's true. Take a chance. You'll be surprised.

Support LGBTQ and ethnically diverse YA books by buying them and taking to Twitter with the hashtag #YesGayYA.

ETA - There has been a rebuttal post to the original PW article stating that nothing in that article was true. You can read that rebuttal here. I do this in the interest of fairness because both sides of the argument deserve to be heard. Just don't expect me to pull a 180 and swing onto the other bandwagon. I don't regret a word I said here, even though it was written a little hastily, and I don't appreciate being told I should be ashamed of myself for promoting #YesGayYA (as so stated in the rebuttal article, not me specifically, of course).

The concern is a real one. YA absolutely needs to be more diverse and the publishing world needs to allow it to happen. Whether these particular events unfolded as either party claimed we'll never know because, as it appears, this happened over a conference call. As I'm very often reminded at work, especially if I need to say something I don't want etched into the permanent void, I should say it over the phone because, well, you can't prove I said anything that way. Or didn't say it. Unless that supposed phone conversation was recorded no one will know the absolute truth. So right now we have A LOT of hearsay and finger-pointing and a whole pile of "should haves" going on. This is very obviously a major fail that happened in communication and maybe it wasn't handled properly but each party perceived a wrong. Based on their perception, what happened was true. Perception is a funny thing. Especially since everyone involved can have a vastly different interpretation of the events that happened. It doesn't make them wrong or right; that's just how they perceived it and if no one took the time to explain themselves, then that perception would only fester.

So, personally, I'm not apt to believe that the original PW article is wholly untrue because someone of authority said so without any more proof to back it up than 'because I said so.' But because the shadow of doubt has been cast over that original PW article, I am taking it with a bigger grain of salt. Of course it could be overblown. Such is what happens when we get all riled up. But does that mean it didn't happen? Or was perceived to have happened? The thing is, I'm more inclined to believe the original article because I've seen proof of this kind of thing with my own eyes. It has been PROVEN that the publishing industry has attempted to sanitize YA, to one extent or another. So yes, I'm leaning more towards the authors on this one. If that's what they perceived to have happened, does that make them right or wrong or did someone not explain themselves properly? We'll never know.

I don't think either article should be entirely discounted but at the same time I don't think people who were so up in arms when this first came out should turn tail and hang their heads in shame. It's one opinion against another. Why is one being handled as so much truer than the other when there's nothing but conjecture backing it up? Until someone throws down some verifiable proof, both are going to have some salt taken with them.

Ban This! Author Bites - Kim Culbertson

I hit Kim up at a really opportune time to contribute to Ban This! because she'd just had an incident at her book group that fit perfectly into the banning mantra, the concept of "all." It's such a blanketing statement that can be detrimental to the greater good if used. How many of us really, truly, genuinely fit under that blanket "all"? I'll let Kim talk about it.

A couple of years ago I was with a group of women I very much admire and we were talking about the young adult novel LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green. Now, I’ll admit, this novel is one of my all time favorite YA novels so I might have been a tad overly-enthusiastic about it when one of the women interrupted me to tell me she’d “never let her 14 year old daughter read it.” Um, what?! Her reaction surprised me, to say the least. Not only would I have loved this book at 14 – it was funny, truthful, heart-breaking, amazing – but I didn’t expect that response from this particular person. “It’s not appropriate,” one of the other women agreed, surprising me more. “Well, maybe for your daughter…,” I started. “No,” she said. “For all 14 year olds.” We moved on to other topics, but I had snagged on the “all” in that sentence. It burrowed into that place in my belly where I often feel like I store the pieces of me that don’t always mesh with mainstream opinion, that little place I store doubts and fears.

Still, this wasn’t new to me – this reaction to what books young people should and should not be reading. I’ve been teaching high school English, drama and creative writing for 14 years. Believe me, parents have a lot of opinions about what books their kids can and cannot read. I’ve had plenty of parents ban a book from their child’s reading list or contest a book I’m teaching in class. They’ve told me their students weren’t allowed to read ENDER’S GAME (“bad message – sending a six year old to war”), THE GOLDEN COMPASS (“no talking animals”), THE SAMARUI’S GARDEN (“um, was that a sex scene?”), OF MICE AND MEN (“not okay with that ending”). The list is endless as to what I’ve been told their kids are not to be reading in my classroom.

So after trying to convince them, and often failing, I let their kids read something else. I do. Because they’re not saying all the kids shouldn’t be reading it (okay, some of them do say this) but mostly, they just don’t want their child reading it. I’m a mom. I understand that impulse to want to protect a child, to want to shelter and save and nourish a child. Some parents choose to do this by limiting sugar, or TV, or exposure to water sports. We all have things that make us feel threatened or afraid as a parent. I just don’t believe in telling other people what their concerns should be. I don’t believe in ALL.

Ironically, I partially wrote SONGS FOR A TEENAGE NOMAD because it was a book I would want to teach in a freshman English class, a book I thought would be fairly free of overtly objectionable material, only to find out it has been banned in several middle school libraries across the country. So much for good intentions.

Because fear’s a tricky impulse.

We never know what’s going to set it off. Spiders. Chickens. Heights…..Books. Each of us have different fears…which is why ALL is the key word here. We can never really decide what’s appropriate for all of us. There’s no such thing. So as educators, as publishers, as librarians, as authors and book bloggers, we try to give out suggestions, guidelines, frameworks, so that people can decide what works for their own specific situations.

Yet, even with all this freedom of choice, people still try to ban books in wide, sweeping ways. I can honestly say I don’t understand this impulse. What if someone tried to ban pizza or the color red? Ridiculous. Why is it different with books?

The other day, I was talking with the Academic Dean at the school where I teach. He’s a wonderful educator who has been doing this for many years. I told him I was writing a piece on the whole tricky subject of banning books. We talked about the necessity of “age appropriate” material – probably not too many people want to show a six year old Schindler’s List. But we talked about how different people had dramatically different comfort levels when it came to content. He’s had his own fair share of parents flipping out (er, expressing concern) over the book lists he hands out in his Government and World History courses. Then he said something typically thoughtful that stuck with me. He said (and I paraphrase) that he understands the parental impulse to shield. He just believes that rather than trying to change the world a child inhabits (to make them believe that through a sheltering of information that they live in a different world than they actually do), he wishes parents would give children the tools to navigate the world they actually live in – whether it’s a seven year old world, a 14 year old world, or an adult world. Talk to them, discuss things with them so they can make good choices. I thought this was beautifully said, because in doing this, parents can help their children succeed in a complicated world rather than simply hiding the complications.

Throughout my teaching, I’ve discovered that in allowing students to tackle sometimes difficult content, they are pushed to hold it up against their own values and beliefs and form an opinion. They have to (gulp) think for themselves about what it is they believe, what offends them, what interests them. I often find myself saying to parents that reading diverse content gives your child actual armor against bad stuff should they encounter it in real 3D life. In high school, I read a novel where a character died of a cocaine overdose – heavy, awful content – but it didn’t make me glorify that lifestyle…it made me know I wanted nothing to do with it. Books are test rides; they allow for do-overs. They provide us a comfortable way to try on idea through another person’s (albeit fictional) experience and ask ourselves how we would have handled a particular situation.

But at the end of the day I come back to that one word: ALL. Not every book will work for every child. We do not live in a one size fits all culture and that is also true for books. Ultimately, a child should feel comfortable with what they are reading. If a book is going to freak them out or make them anxious or cause them stress, they don’t need to be reading it. Yet that doesn’t mean their friend who loves that sort of thing shouldn’t be reading it. As adults we’re allowed to choose the content we consume (no one is dragging me to a horror movie against my will). We self-select all the time. Children should also be allowed to say, “That’s not for me” or “I would like to read that,” and then be given the opportunity to explain why. My seven year old daughter won’t go near Disney movies. She finds them scary and upsetting. “Why do they hate all the mommies?” she wondered once. She told me that the moms always seem to be dead, or absent, or wicked. She has a point. But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to tell other parents of seven year olds that they shouldn’t let their kids watch Disney movies. It also means that when she’s ready to sit down and watch Bambi with me and talk about why Disney seems to have it out for mommies, I know we’ll have a really interesting conversation about it. Point is, we have to know our kids and we have to trust our kids. We have to offer them reading and viewing selections that match up with their sensibilities and encourage them to keep forming their armor and their own ideas as individuals. Okay, I’ll say it –all of us need to do that.

Ban This! Author Bites - Deb Caletti

Deb has already written a fantastic blog post on the subject of book banning because one of her books has had that pleasure, if that's what you want to call it. Based on her blog post, she's patting herself on the back for joining the ranks of other authors banned. She gave me permission to repost her entire post but because I'm all for driving traffic to the websites of awesome authors, I'm just going to post an excerpt, and then you can head on over to her blog to read the rest. It won't take long, and I'll be well worth the time.

Books are information, ideas, and they are open doors. They provide empathy at hours you would never call a friend or family member, and they broaden our own ability to be compassionate human beings through shared “experience.” Censorship limits information, tell you what to think, closes doors. It is judgmental, always, limits our ability to be compassionate by teaching righteousness. Nothing I could write would be as shocking and offensive as censorship itself. Censorship is a hand against your mouth, your hands tied behind your back, a blindfold over your eyes. It’s oppression and control, and were it not done by people in suit jackets, it would be called an act of violence.

Read the rest here. You can visit Deb Caletti here. She's the author of such books as STAY, THE SECRET LIFE OF PRINCE CHARMING, and the banned book, QUEEN OF EVERYTHING.

The Ban Factor

In honor of my Ban This! event going on, at the end of every review I post this month I'll be tacking on what I'm calling the Ban Factor. The book in the review can fall into one of three levels: low, medium or high. They shall be rated thusly -

Low - A rather innocuous read, the book banners will REALLY need to dig for something to challenge this book with. They'll probably find it anyway.

Medium - The chances of this book being challenged and/or banned are decent but it could fly under the radar. It probably has some swearing in it and if it does have any kind of sexual references, they're pretty buried.

High - Book banners will be going Cujo to sink their teeth into the likes of this book. It'll probably have multiple issues with it that cause the pressure inside the banners' heads to increase to a painful degree and which can only be alleviated by pitching hissy fits about the loss of their children's' innocence at the hands of corrupting authors.

My review for THE MAGICIANS by Lev Grossman is the first review of the month to have the Ban Factor attached to it. Look for it in my reviews for the rest of September. You'll find them just under the bite rating.

A Challenge Not Even Hit Yet

Sometime around mid-week I was listening to a morning show out of Springfield, Massachusetts. The day before they received a letter from someone anonymous stating to be on the look-out because parents are starting to get rankled by a title in school libraries for the start of the term: THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN by Sherman Alexie. The letter-writer stated that while nothing has been made official yet, some parents have been speaking about how the book should be removed because it's far too violent and sexually explicit for teens to be reading.

Had any of these parents actually read the book? Of course not. The source of the letter couldn't be confirmed and I haven't been able to find anything relating to a book challenge in Springfield this year. But people write stuff like this into this particular show because, well, Bax and O'Brien like to mock the shit out of stupidity. How much stupider could one be than a book banner?

They then went into a discussion about what they read when they were younger and asked why stuff like MACBETH wasn't being challenged because the body count in that read is pretty damn high. Of course, they mentioned the accessibility of the internet. Why would parents insist on banning books if their kid could just go on the internet and look up what a blow job is? Or go and play Grand Theft Auto and beat the shit out of some hookers for points? To that I say fucking duh.

You know, we're blue states. We're supposed to be the liberal ones, not wound up too tightly about religion or silly things like book bannings. Apparently. So to hear about something like this going on in my own nominally close back yard in the "liberal" section of the country makes me want to cry. Usually when you hear about book bannings they're coming out of the redder states where people have a larger, and publicly prominent, hold on religion and more conservative family values (states like Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, Virginia). But in Massachusetts? Yeah, the state's filled with obnoxious Red Sox fans but book banners? The state where gay marriage was first made legal? The first state to adopt mandatory medical insurance for all residents (a fart away from socialized medicine) first took hold? Really? I'm shocked.

Maybe my head's a bit in the clouds about this. Maybe I'm polarizing the states a little bit. Are the more Puritanical values ingrained up here too, just a little more in the closet? Or am I just naive? Book bannings can't happen here. We're crazy liberals that want to hug everyone. But apparently there are book banners in our midst. Nowhere is safe. I know that now. There are parents that want to parent everyone's children, not just their own, EVERYWHERE.

I mean, books have been banned in New York recently but that's not New England. They're not REAL Yankees (despite the team). But I guess it's reached New England too. Nowhere is safe from book banning anymore. If it ever really was. Maybe they've been around for a while and it just never made any kind of crazy attention in the likes of the recent Republic, MO issue going on. Still, it doesn't make it any less horrifying. Now I just have a medium where I can physically go to town meetings about this stuff and voice my opinion on challenging idiocy. Oh that's bad.