Lynness: Banned books week Sept 26- Oct 3

I didn't know there was a banned books week until I went to the
library and saw a display with CAUTION tape all over it. So, of
course, I went and investigated. I picked up "The Bookseller of
Kabul." I was actually there to pick up my reserved copy of "The
Giver" which, turns out, has been banned before, too. As have the
books in the Harry Potter series, the Twilight series, Huckleberry
Finn, The Scarlet Letter, Anne Frank's diary, The Arabian Nights, Call
of the Wild, Fahrenheit 451 (hmmm... you know, the one about book
banning), A Light in the Attic, Little House on the Prairie, and A
Wrinkle in Time, to name a few. There's many more that you've heard
of or read, and even more that you've probably never heard of and that
you, like me, would probably not want to read, judging from the
descriptions of why they were banned.

So here's to opening a can of worms (I like to do that): what do you
do if (as has happened in many of these cases) your elementary school
child comes home with a book that you discover has violent or overtly
sexual themes and descriptions? Or, if your teenager is assigned to
read a book for an AP Lit class (like mine) that encourages adultery
or homosexuality?

I agree with what U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, in Texas
v. Johnson, said, "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the
First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the
expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself
offensive or disagreeable." And I agree that access to any materials
should be supervised by parents. But, in the case of books picked up
and read in school, or even aloud in classes, that I would not want my
child to see/her, what do you do? Many parents have asked for books
to be removed (or have simply checked them out and refused to return
them). In some cases, nothing has changed. In some cases, the
attention to the books in question have made them more of alluring to
those whom the parents were trying to protect. In many cases the
books have been moved to another location and access limited to those
with parental consent or over a certain age/grade level. I think, as
a parent and a book-lover, that this is the ideal solution: access is
still permitted to anyone else, but I have a say in what my children
read. As far as assigned reading, I was lucky: we had a choice of two
books- I chose one less offensive to me and my beliefs. I'm not even
sure if my mom knew what I was reading or the choices I had. I read
many books from the lists of banned books that, while I wouldn't have
chosen them for myself and didn't like, I did not find particularly
offensive. Perhaps part of this was that the sexual parts, to
sheltered little me, were simply over my head.

Back to the beginning- I read The Giver and The Bookseller of Kabul.
I liked the first, and didn't find the second offensive at all, just
hopeless feeling, which is, I think, exactly what the author was
trying to convey.

Go read a banned book!!