One of my dearest readers and favorite bloggers (link at bottom) gave us an assignment for banned book week. She wants all of us to blog about a banned book we either read specifically for this or just have read. I of course forgot all about it and then put it off all week until it’s now Friday and I shall have to half ass it. Because honestly… banned books are not my top priority (it‘s surveys). Luckily I seem to have read/and own most of the books from the link she gave us.
Also. I should confess I have banned some books in my own house. *gasp* I know. Just proves you never know what a book banner might look like. It can be someone you least expect. When your child gets up at three am because she “can’t sleep” and you find Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in her bedcovers with a flashlight … something must be done.
However...a quick glance over the American Library Association’s list of classic books that have been banned reveals that parents are most often the folks requesting that a book be banned. (I was picturing ogre types) They want the books removed from school reading lists and class curriculum or taken off the shelves of local libraries because they’re “vulgar” or use “obscene language” or contain “explicit sexual content” or simply “take the lords name in vain” or “have more violence than seems necessary.”
The parents are protesting against their children growing up.
The parents are protesting the big wide world of other opinions thoughtfully expressed.
The parents are protesting against the world stinks and someone fucking wrote it down.
And I’m guilty. I have a bookshelf filled with banned books and when my daughter stands perusing the selection I get twitchy. I hold my breath when her fingers trail the spines and I see her lips mouthing the titles. The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, The Catcher in the Rye, 1984, Catch-22, The Color Purple, Lord of the Flies, Lolita, Invisible Man, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Slaughterhouse Five, For Whom the Bells Tolls, Johnny Got His Gun, A Clockwork Orange.
!!! The sex. The violence. The big gaping hole in world. The sky is falling and inevitable death of it all. The hurt and the love and the aching futility. My gawd! I don’t want to answer those questions! I don’t even have those answers! A fairy or bunny or even a jolly saint with thousands of elves could not carry the amount of cash needed to cushion the loss that would occur with those understandings! (we don't have god)
So I hold my breath. And I monitor my elevated heart rate. And I casually ask if she’s ready for a trip to the library with their half height shelved children’s section. And I think it will be another three or four years before I open complete access to all my books. (I also still catch her leaving books face down instead of using one of her fifty book marks) In the meantime… there is plenty of banned literature written for children to choose from. She’s already read many of them Where the Wild Things Are, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Wrinkle in Time, Bridge to Terabithia, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing… to name a few.
And I think that’s right. She’s (almost) nine. I’m her mother. What I don’t understand is anyone thinking they’re allowed to mother all of us. Book banning is not a terrible thing that used to happen. Books are challenged and banned and removed from shelves every year. Books are still burned. The Harry Potter series is currently among the most frequently challenged books as measured by the ALA. Now. Not all of us are Harry Potter fans. But banning it? BURNING it? It’s ridiculous.
So… I’m saying… go ahead and choose for you… and go ahead and choose for your children… but you don’t get to choose for me or mine. And good day.
October 2, 2009
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