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.

Support Ellen Hopkins

As you all know, there were some shenanigans with the Norman, Oklahoma school district involving Ellen Hopkins and her books. One crazy ass parent ripped into the school, demanded Crank and Glass be removed from the library and didn't want Ellen speaking to any students in the entire school district. The psycho got her wish because the superintendent is a pussy and doesn't want to actually have a discussion about something like that and would much rather just snuff it before the flame gets too big.

So Ellen's books were banned from the library and she, as a person, was banned from the school district. Neener on them that she still spoke at a local venue but, of course, no one that made the fuss about her to begin with deigned to show up. Figures, right? Surely that wacko mom had never read any of Ellen's books either. Just found out what they were about and went on a stink about them.

Now Ellen's got a local radio personality on her ass about the good of the banning, the bad of her books and the immorality she's promoting by writing such filth. Yeah, if you're not *headdesk*ing by now, you're a better person than I am.

Now Ellen's asking for your help. Go to her blog and snag the email addresses she has listed. BE NICE and send in your reasons why Ellen is a fantastic author, why her books are encouraging and why they should remain on the shelves. The objective here is to BE NICE! Meaning, don't use coarse language. It'll pretty much invalidate your point and get your email deleted. Say what you want, but say it with class.

Yeah, this coming from me. Hey, I'm not sending the guy my blog post, am I? But be sure to send your thoughts to these guys and get your voices heard and make sure that Ellen gets her day in court. She and her books don't deserve to be treated like they have by the Norman, Oklahoma locals.

ELLEN HOPKINS BANNED FROM OK SCHOOL!!!

No, I'm not joking, unfortunately. A big thanks to Mari Mancusi for the heads up about this.

Ellen Hopkins donated her time (including travel and board) to a charity cause that landed her in a middle school in Norman, Oklahoma for an author visit scheduled for September 22, this coming Tuesday. This past Tuesday, September 15th, an irate parent bum-rushed the school and demanded that Crank and Glass be removed due to the content. The superintendent conceded and not only pulled the books but forbade Ellen from speaking at that school or the high school.

The upside, the librarian that organized the whole thing, Karin Perry, wouldn't let the day fall and organized for Ellen to speak at the Hillsdale Baptist College at 7:30 on Tuesday. If you're in the area, or know anyone who is, be sure to spread the word and flood the campus in support of Ellen.

Read Ellen's LiveJournal post about it all here.

Of course, the geniuses at SafeLibraries had to have their say in her comments section, posting how how no books have been banned within the last 50 years . . . on an author's blog post ranting not only about how her books were banned from said school library but how she, herself, was forbidden from speaking at that school or the high school . . . O_o Facts? Facts?! Who needs facts? We'll just plug our ears and go LALALALALALALALALA because that so pwns facts like whoa. O_o

Aaaaaaaaanyway, be sure to leave Ellen a comment on her blog to show your love for her and her work and show how moronic the entire situation is. Shame on you, Dr. Joseph Siano, superintendent of Norman's public schools. Lemme guess, you smoked under peer pressure, didn't you?

Author Bites - Ellen Hopkins on Why

After reading Tricks I had to get Ellen Hopkins to talk a little bit on my blog. And she graciously agreed. And she agreed to talk about why she writes the kind of stories she does. She just made me love her even more!

First, I'd like to thank Donna again for plunging into Tricks, which is undoubtedly my toughest book yet, in many ways. I found it quite interesting that she said she had to put it down several times, yet was almost obsessively drawn to return. Interesting, because my husband had the same reaction. You'd think he'd be used to my writing by now.

My path to bestselling author was never a sure thing, yet I feel like fate drew me here. I knew I was a writer. Knew I could make a living writing, and I was eeking out meager sustenance as a freelance writer and nonfiction children's book author when fate slapped me in the face. My oldest daughter, my "perfect child" fell in with the wrong crowd, gave crystal meth a try, and our lives have never been the same. It was six years before I could even try to make sense of that, and the only way I could figure to do it was to write her story. From her point of view. Problem was, in prose it was my voice, not hers.

Confession: I've always been a closet poet. It wasn't academic poetry, or even particularly polished, but I'd been growing it through a local poetry group and was beginning to come into my own as a poet. So when I saw another verse novelist, Sonya Sones, speak at a conference I knew almost immediately that verse was the way to tell "Kristina's" story. Verse is personal. Interior. Filled with imagery, stark as it might be, and once I started Crank in verse, well the rest was [fairly recent] history. Less than five years, in fact.

Okay, I got my catharsis. And more. In fact. I discovered something totally unexpected--where I belonged as a writer. I understood not only my daughter, but her generation. OMG, as they say, I so remember my own teenage struggle to find my place in the world. False starts. Wrong turns. A good deal of pain, and yes, not a little joy. And I can put those things on paper, in a way that resonates not only with teens, but with those who have been teens.

I continue to write tough subject matter because issues like sexual or physical abuse, addiction, cutting, depression and more touch every single life, in one way or another. Still, despite what to many might feel like no way out, there is hope. But hope is all about intent. Reaching for something better. Through the (literally) scores of messages I receive every day, I know I am offering hope, and the knowledge that people, young or old, are not alone within their imagined isolation.

Yes, there is room for fluff in literature. Gossip Girls. Vampires. Captain Underpants. But there will always be a deeper hunger for books readers can relate to their own lives. I had a story that led me to this unimaginably wonderful place. Maybe you do, too. Fictionalize where you must. But be fearless. Some special reader (and maybe an entire generation of them) needs to hear your voice.

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins + Contest!

Pub date - August 25, 2009.

Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching . . . for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don't expect, though, is that they can have all these things when those powerful little words "I love you" are said for all the wrong reasons. Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story - a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. (book back blurb)

I've never read any of Ellen Hopkins's books but I knew going into this one that she wrote on the grittier side of the YA line. She didn't take the mythical or fantastical route. She kept it real. Really real. So that much I knew. I can't vouch for the rest of her books but this one was something you slit your wrists to.

Halfway through it I contemplated not finishing the book. I just couldn't bear to read on. I hated reading about teens going through such absolute shit because, and what it really boiled down to was, a lack of something at home, usually love. I can't read too many of these books too often. Yes. It's too real. It's too heartbreaking. Yes, it's labeled as fiction but it's not a stretch to think that the stories in this book hit a little too close to home to a few too many teens out there. It's made me think more seriously about fostering when I move out on my own. Having children just isn't really my thing. But helping the abandoned, forgotten, rejected and unloved . . . how could I not? How can I ignore something like this? How can anyone?

As I said, this is my first Ellen Hopkins book so I don't know if the rest of her novels are in verse but this one is, rotating between the five different characters. With hindsight, the blurb is misleading. But I'll leave that for you to discover when you read it.

All of the stories start out innocent enough, about first loves, coming into your own, finding solace in a friend. But then they start to change and you see how they end up where they end up but at the same time you can't help but ask, "How the hell did they get here? Where did it all go wrong?" And it hurts to read because you see every single one of them spiraling away from their former selves because the support system that should be there isn't.

I was most compelled by Eden's story, the girl growing up in a born-again Christian family who falls in love with a boy that's genuinely good for her, just not good for her parents. It brings me back to religion and how such god-fearing people that teach the supposed word of god, who's supposed to be compassionate and loving, up and do what Eden's parents did to her. Thrown away like some soiled shirt that makes the wearer look bad. It's horrible.

My beloved Santa Cruz is the home base of Whitney, the girl that just wants to be loved. Even the happiness I feel every time I go to that beach town couldn't permeate the sour emotions and feelings Whitney associated with that town. For Ginger, it's amazing she's as well-adjusted as she is for the type of mother she has, if you want to call Iris a mother. Read the story and I'm sure you won't. Sean's story rings all too true, I'm sure, to many, many people out there. Again, for all the love religion is supposed to teach people, how parents can shun their children for who they are is disgusting. Cody's life was probably the most well-adjusted out of them all but things start to slide down hill and while his intentions are good, his methods are, well, not. Still, I can't help but put some blame on his mother. Losing someone you love is painful but it's your duty, as a parent, to not forget about your children. That situation reminded me of Katniss and Prim with their mother, how she shut down after their father died. It's a selfish act.

While most of my reading will still be confined to slightly more frivolous stuff, reading a book like this is not only eye-opening and heart-wrenching, it's a good slap to the face that I think everyone needs every once in a while. We're all prone to complaining about something in our lives, whatever it may be. But it could be worse. And these kids go through a hell of a lot worse.

Hopkins has an insane ability to tap into the minds of the down-and-out teen and tell their story exactly how it needs to be told without sugar-coating anything. There's no hiding for the reader because the characters have nowhere to hide themselves. Why should you get the luxury? I have a hard time calling the teens in this book characters because they're more than that. They're tangible and it's sad to say that they're more real than what the pages decree. And the way that such separate stories end up coming together at the end it just amazing. There aren't words for it. These children that lead separate lives are, in some way, supported by one another.

While I can't go out and gobble up all of Hopkins other novels because I'm not all for slipping into a depression, I will slowly indoctrinate myself to her work over time. Books like this shouldn't be ignored and good on Hopkins for writing it so real. Go read this book. Read it now. And then read it again. It only took me about a day to finish its more than 600 pages. I just couldn't put it down. You can't help but hope that everything will turn out ok in the end. But even in life, nothing is certain.

CONTEST TIME!

I have an extra ARC of Tricks by Ellen Hopkins to give away. You want it? Here's what you have to do -

Comment with your contact info to enter (blogger profile is fine)
+1 for new followers
+2 for current followers
+2 for linking back/posting about this contest
+2 for answering the question, "What's the one book that moved you the most and why?"
+3 for referring someone to the contest
+3 for being the person referred

Be sure to tell me specifics otherwise I won't know how to tally up the points! Contest is open to US residents only and it ends 7/5.