So far I’ve only posted author features on this site, but as I started to post a very long rant on the Facebook page today, I realized that I should go ahead and write a blog about it, so here goes my first non-author related blog post.
It is Banned Book Week and every year I celebrate by reading one of the most banned books of the year. This year I let you guys vote on Facebook among the ones I had not yet read and ‘The Agony of Alice’ by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was selected. I see why it is so beloved…and why some might want to ban it, though I expect the banning is more for future books in the series based on the summaries I read. I loved it! It was an extremely well written and realistic portrayal of the things that plague a sixth-grade girl, complete with friend fights, boy trouble, family issues, body image, and bra shopping. Even as an adult I cringed and blushed right along with Alice, recalling my own middle school embarrassments and that is a credit to the author. If my kids wanted to read it (well, first I’d applaud their courage to take on such a big book – they’re 3 and 5 as of tomorrow) I would make sure that I sat down and talked with them when they finished about all of the issues therein.
Which leads me to my Banned Book Week rant- There is no reason to censor books! If you don’t want your kids to read things yet, that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be available to everyone else or, frankly, that your kids shouldn’t read them at sometime in their lives. I don’t let my kids watch a lot of tv and when we do it’s educationally fun fare (Team Umizoomi mostly, sometime Dora or Dinosaur Train, stuff like that). I know that many of their friends have long ago graduated from Dora, and that’s fine, but at our house, we’re sticking to the kiddie fare for a bit longer. They can watch Disney kid stars and superhero battles soon enough. For books it is no different. We prescreen what the kids read for what we think is appropriate for their ages.
If my girls want a book that we don’t think is age appropriate, we let them buy it but we tell them that it will go into the library until they are old enough. Most times they will choose something else, but sometimes they really want that book. As an example, Marie Grace (the American girl doll) has a book that deals heavily with racism and classism, and it sits on a shelf in our library. What we told the girls was that the book contained grown-up things and that when they are big enough they can read it, but not yet. My oldest has on many occasions checked to make sure that it is still there, but she understands that it is not currently something she’s allowed to read. On the other hand, Barbie cheerleader just came out of the library. The content was fine, but my daughter is quick to pick up fashion ideas, so when we finished we talked about cheerleading and then we talked about Barbie’s questionable fashion choices and confirmed that skirts need to hit the knees and bellies should never show.
When my girls are older, we will certainly read Marie Grace as well and then we’ll talk about what they take out of the story and how they feel about it and relate to it. Books are great to spawn discussion (so says the online bookclub girl 🙂 )! Rather than try to get books banned, try to talk to your kids about THE CONTENT of the books they are reading. We always (well, except when its way past bedtime or we’re fried…there are those days) talk to the kids about what they think about a story after reading it, whether the book is ‘Knuffle Bunny’, which led to a great discussion about how my kids would feel if they lost their blankets and I told them about when I lost mine long ago, or ‘How Do Dinosaurs…” which we used to talk about manners. Every story, no matter how seemingly silly, makes you and your kids think, even if you do not talk to them about what it is they are taking out of the story. You’d be surprised how rich a discussion you can have about ‘Green Eggs and Ham’. Trust me – my three year old and I talked all night about how someone at school frequently tries to get her to eat yucky stuff at lunch and sometimes she likes it but more often she just doesn’t like to be forced to do stuff by “the Kindergardeners!” (the big kids in her class that I think my baby tortures by refusing them the authority they’ve earned by being the oldest).
Don’t ban books! Talk to your kids! They are grappling with all of the issues that you want to shield them from already. Let’s be honest, no kid has ever heard about kissing first in a book and otherwise might have never tried to kiss someone. Most middle grade and young adult books at least have some moral message and the kids doing bad things usually have something bad happen to them. A good book might even help your discussion with your kids on sensitive topics because it’s easier to say “Alice was scared to talk to her Dad about buying a bra. What should she have done?” than it may be to ask your daughter if she is scared to ask you about wanting one. Or Alice held on to a religious card for strength, what do you do? What do you think Mommy would want you to do? Or the church? Or your friends? It’s a lot easier to start a discussion that way than to confront your daughter with the hard to answer question of what she does to gain strength when she feels lost.
In case you are curious, the 10 most challenged titles of 2011 were: (from the Banned Book Week page)
- ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group - The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group - The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence - My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group - Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Reasons: nudity; offensive language; religious viewpoint - Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity; nudity; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit - What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
Reasons: nudity; offensive language; sexually explicit - Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
Reasons: drugs; offensive language; sexually explicit - To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Reasons: offensive language; racism
Thoughts from the Roundtable?
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