Every year, the last week in September is the official national celebration of Banned Books, sponsored by American Booksellers for Free Expression, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores, and endorsed by the Center for the Books of the Library of Congress.
Bookstores and libraries find this week a popular promotion. According to the ABA’s site, “[Readers] are surprised when they learn that there are hundreds of book challenges every year–and that some of their favorites are on the list!” Maybe it’s the inherent rebellion in all of us. Nothing makes us want to read a book more than being told that we shouldn’t. I get such a kick out of some of the Banned Books Week buttons and other paraphernalia, like the ones that say, “I F***ing Love Banned Books!” But, cheek aside, the true message of this week is much simpler: you celebrate freedom by reading banned books.
My fiancé remembers complaining to his mother about being assigned Catcher in the Rye in high school. She told him that he should feel lucky; when she was in school, she would have been kicked out for reading it.
While most of us have heard about the challenges and occasionally even “burnings” and “book-cuttings” visited upon the Harry Potter novels (#1 most challenged book series this century!) because of their supposed “promotion of the occult,” are you aware of the ten most commonly banned or challenged books so far this century? Did you know that Captain Underpants makes the list? (No! Anything but laughter and unmentionables!) How about at title that hits closer to home for romance readers, such as Forever by Judy Blume? (Now in its third decade of being both challenged and adored!) Number twenty on the list from 1990-2000 is the romance-heavy Earth’s Children Series by Jean M. Auel.
I remember wanting to read Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear as a “tween.” My mother, concerned that some of the material was too adult for me, read through it first, then gave it to me with the instructions that I could come and talk to her if I had any questions about what happened to Ayla. (She was specifically concerned about the rape scenes.) This is the appropriate way for a parent to monitor a child’s reading. Knowledge and discussion; not an angry mob congregating outside a school or library to insist that books be removed and burned, as happened in this chilling case in Norwood, Colorado in 2005. A school book, Bless Me, Ultima, was deemed inappropriate for freshman reading, but instead of having the copies that were confiscated from the students donated elsewhere or sold to help recoup the cost, the school superintendent agreed to the request when “the parents approached the superintendent and asked that they be able to burn the books instead of the school janitor destroying them.” The book contains some light profanity and, since it deals with racism, also contains some characters who never do see past their prejudices.
And yet, the real danger is not and angry mob jumping on the bandwagon and storming principal’s offices or staging book burnings outside of Barnes & Noble. The real danger is that under the pressure of such groups, schools and libraries will quietly remove any book they feel may bring them under scrutiny from their shelves. Booksellers, afraid of the fallout, may refuse to stock sexy romances. (Some already do.) Writers, pressured by publishers to “reach the largest market possible” will censor themselves, veering away from the truth in order to capture only the inoffensive. And children, who are most often the target of these efforts at censorship, will grow up into adult readers who think that only certain things should be “allowed” in books.
Popular (and often challenged) author Judy Blume writes:
“[Book banners] want to believe that if their children don’t read about it, their children won’t know about it. And if they don’t know about it, it won’t happen. Today, it’s not only language and sexuality (the usual reasons given for banning my books) that will land a book on the censors’ hit list. It’s Satanism, New Age-ism and a hundred other isms, some of which would make you laugh if the implications weren’t so serious. Books that make kids laugh often come under suspicion; so do books that encourage kids to think, or question authority; books that don’t hit the reader over the head with moral lessons are considered dangerous.”
Do we want that for any reader, young or otherwise? Look at the lists of most banned books. They contain several of my favorites: such as Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane, Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George, Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, the Anastasia Krupnik (Series) and The Giver by Lois Lowry, The Pigman by Paul Zindel, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I want and encourage others to read these amazing stories.
This September, support Banned Books Week by reading a new one, picking a favorite banned book and re-reading, or better yet, giving it to a young reader who may love it just as much as you did.
No related posts.
If I tried to restrict my reading to books with nothing considered objectionable in them I would be leaving so many out! I work with a lady who will only read christian fiction because as she puts it they are “good, clean books.” Now, I’ve read some good stories in that genre, but when she says that it just makes me want to go read something dirty! We are promoting Banned Books week at our library this week. Last Friday when we were pulling books for the display there was one we found (we were consulting a list) that for the life of us we could not figure out why it would be on that list. Do you know of any website that gives reasons as to why certain books are banned or challenged?
Sam, I haven’t yet seen a website that goes into specifics like “such and such book was challeneged for such and such reason” but sometimes I would love to see it. The ALA website breaks challenges down by institution (i.e., library, school, etc. , initiatior (i.e., parent, elected official, etc.), type (the most common are “sexually explicit” contain “offensive language,” and be “unsuited to age group.”), and year.
But often authors will share anecdotes about their own works. Judy Blume in the foreword to a collection of short stories by censored writers, says that often books are censored for no other reason than the need for control — perhaps because they made a child laugh, or think outside the box, or question authority. Her book about school bullies, Blubber, was challeneged because not all of the bad guys were punished at the end. Superfudge was challenged because a chapter entitled “Santa Who?” was called “anti-Christmas!” (Once people started finding reasons to go after Blume books, they went, hard core!)
I’m supposing Captain Underpants was challenged because the main character is running around in his underpants?
Captain Underpants, who would have thunk it? I don’t know all of the books on the list, but I do want to read them now. Well, except Captain Underpants, I get to read that one to my kids no matter what.
I have the philosophy that if you don’t like what you’re reading then stop reading. Same with TV, if you don’t like what’s on then turn it off. People should learn to take responsibility for themselves before forcing others to live by their limited standards.
Hmm, I see a couple of titles in the top 10 list I haven’t read. Must do that!
And it’s always good to re-read Harry Potter and A Wrinkle In Time.
As a minister, I often find my name is on the mailing lists of politically conservative or religiously fundamental groups seeking to ban books for one reason or another. Their calls to arms frequently include inflammatory disinformation about the books in question.
As a Christian, I am particularly saddened by the fundamentalists’ apparent assumption that imagination and humor represent some form of danger. Harry Potter being actively anti-Christian is fairly common. But also cited as anti-Christian are works by Madeleine L’Engle and C. S. Lewis — two of the foremost writers of Christian science fiction and fantasy. I got my two minutes of fame on the Christian radio network K-Love when I phoned in a response to anti-Harry-Potterism. I phoned in to one of their talk shows and advised parents to parent. As in your example: Read the book, decide which points you felt might need to be talked about, and be ready to discuss them if your child asks. Apparently a recording of my advice was repeated several times on the air and was a sound file on their website for a few days. (”A minister from North Carolina suggests….”) No idea if I had any effect.
Personally, I found Auel’s Earth’s Children series offensive both as a student of anthropology and as a partner in a racially blended family because of her overtly racist (and demonstrably wrong) assumption that whiteness is the driving force behind human intelligence, morality, and civilization. I discussed what I believed was wrong with her fundamental premise with our oldest daughter (completely missing the possible impact of the rape — more on that in a moment) after she read the book and discovered that she’d been unable to finish it for that very reason.
On the subject of race: I did not see the Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” until it was in syndication. That was the episode with the infamous kiss between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura. I lived in the south, and many southern stations refused to air the episode. I’ve found that conservatives on both sides of the black/white color line are still quick to question books which depict couples of different races loving each other — or treating each other with more than distant respect.(And yes, To Kill a Mockingbird, too.)
The only area in which I might support some form of rating system — not a banning — is in the area of age appropriateness. (I work with children and young adults who have special needs in the emotional or mental areas and am often searching YA books for resources.) I recently read a book aimed at the 12 to 14-year-old girl market that featured an explicit and brutal rape scene. (I no longer have the book and a quick check of Amazon.com reveals there is no book with the title I thought I remembered.) While I would have no problem with this book in a high school library, I question whether the graphic depiction was appropriate for children using the middle school library library where I found it (grades 6-8). Rather than organize a mob to burn their single copy, I chatted with the librarian — who had not read the book — explaining my concerns. What she did about it I have no idea.
Thanks for the great post, Diana. It is very frightening to consider the stifling power of censorship. And important that we as writers recognize it as so and do our best to advocate for our freedom.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips featured a subplot on censorship in her book, This Heart of Mine.
The reasons for challenging some children’s books absolutely puzzle me. I’ve been meaning to pick up the Auel books so this week’s as good a week as any.
Check out Banned Books (dot) com. It lays the books out and tells you why they were challenged:
http://www.banned-books.com/bblist.html
[...] Happy Banned Books Week! [...]
To Kill A Mockingbord?
That is insane.
Ultimately a book banner wants to ban books because it’s easier than 1) talking to their own children and 2) teaching said children the concepts of personal responsibility and critical thinking.
I also think that adults give kids a little too much credit at times. As an example, I read Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes as a teen and loved it (often challenged because of sexual content). Upon rereading it as an adult my first reaction was – “Damn, I don’t remember there being so much sex in this book!” Keyes writes these scenes almost as smoke and mirrors – and as a teen it all flew over my head. As an adult I picked up on every single nuance.
But then, I was a pretty dopey kid….
Wendy… there’s sex in that book? I remember watching the movie Charle and thinking they’d sexed it up a lot. Maybe not!
Tonda, thanks for the link, I’m going to spend all day on this site, I know!
Diana,
LOL – yep there’s sex. I remember being downright shocked by it when I reread the book in my 20s. But then, Keyes doesn’t beat the reader over the head with it – so it’s easy to see why I “missed” ALL of it as a teen reader.
Thanks for the great post, Diana. Living out on the Left Coast, I sometimes forget that there are a lot of people in this country who have enough time on their hands to get upset about things like Captain Underpants, for goodness sake. Stuff like this makes me so crazy that I have about a billion thoughts careening around my brain. Here’s my most coherent one though: I find it intersting that while booksellers might become squeamish about stocking more sexually explicit material, the erotica/erotic romance market continues to grow, particularly paranormal erotic romance.
And I also adored Clan of the Cave Bear and the Earth’s Children series (but not so much the last one).
Great post. I am a grad student getting a degree that will allow me to work in school libraries. I have had several classes that center around banned books and it is frustrating to see people ban a book for such stupid reasons. Some of my classmates would tell horror stories from their schools about parents challenging books for various reasons. Personally, if they do not want their child to read a certain book then they should restrict the child not restrict the book in the library.
Okay, back to announce I’m an idiot. Or at least old. Had lunch at the restaurant our eldest manages. Told her about this blog and the book with the rape scene I couldn’t remember.
She said:
Dad, that wasn’t one you found working with a client. It was a book I had checked out of the library when I was twelve. (She’s 24 now.) The librarian knew the book very well and you completely blew her mind when you told her you thought the rape scene was too emotionally graphic for a middle school book. She’d defended that book against parents a lot of times, but no one had complained about the rape.
The librarian even asked you: “What about the girls being lesbians?”
And you said: “Oh no, the love story was very sweet.” Then went back to explaining how damaging the hate and violence of the rape scene could be to a young girl coming on it unexpectedly.
According to my daughter, in her senior year the school librarian was still telling people I was one of the odder parents.
The misremembered title I could not find on Amazon was “All Happy Endings are the Same.”
The real name of the book is “Happy Endings are all Alike” by Scoppettone.
Wow, these are some really great stories. I don’t know what to do about the “not appropriate for age group” issue.
On one hand, I understand the concern. I recently told the mother of a nine year old girl that no, it wasn’t okay to let her child go wild in the YA section of Borders if she wanted to keep her child from reading sexually explicit books, and that YA means “young adult” (note the “adult”) — not “child.” I found some scenes in Philip Pullman’s “Golden Compass” to be a little on teh heavy side (and I’m told it gets even heavier in later versions). I might give that to an older hcild, maybe 12, whereas I would feel better about giving the Narnia books to someone at 7.
But I think it goes back to the issue of who has the right to do the policing. A parent can tell her child not to read something. A parent should not be able to tell a school that someone else’s child can’t read — right? The problem of course, being that the child forbidden to read something by his parents can just go and take it out of the school library. But is this the school’s fault? The issue is not about deciding what is age-appropriate for your children. it’s about deciding what is age appropriate for someone else’s child.
When I was a kid, there were all manner of ways to read dirty stuff at school. Just go to the encyclopedia and look up “sexual reproduction” if nothing else sufficed.
The reasons for challenging some children’s books absolutely puzzle me. I’ve been meaning to pick up the Auel books so this week’s as good a week as any.
Bunch of busybodies.
Let parents decide.
When banning isn’t possible, will check out books from a libraray never intending to return them. This tactic’s been famously used against the San Francisco Public Libraray to try an keep the two mommies & two daddies picture books off the shelves.
My wife was a librarian for a few years and the “check-out for no return” was the favorite form of censorship. Essentially any book that dealt with witchcraft in any way would disappear. It didn’t matter if it was a history of the Salem witch trials, a discussion of Wicca, or a personal invocation to Satan. They all disappeared. (OK, I don’t think they carried any personal invocations to Satan, but you get the point. The thieves had no care of merit or purpose.) I think the library should have started a little racketeering scheme, where they buy the book for $40 and charge $100 to the “borrower”. Of course, what small college library has time and money to pursue people who don’t pay fines?
I somehow managed to catch an interview on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club where the interviewee was doing everything he could to persuade the audience that it would be OK to see The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe movie without their children slowly falling to Satan. Apparently, there’s this thing called “allegory”….
I heard of that “not returning” thing — blows my mind but perhaps is not so surprising. Library budgets might not choose to replace things if they just know they’ll disappear again. What a terrible waste!
I heard about all the trouble that the narnia movie was going to to promote itself as a christian film.
Like what you have to say. Your blog makes good since to me.