Be Bad … Binge a Banned Book
Hurray my fellow book lovers! It is officially Banned Book Week. A week, once a year, that we celebrate all those naughty, nasty books that tried to infiltrate our school libraries.
Okay, to be honest, I’ve never gotten into the hype of banned books because, well, quite frankly, I think the act of banning a book, or throwing a tizzy-fit over a book’s content, is dumb. If anything, it brings more attention to the title than anything. So bravo, Book Banner! You (maybe) did a marvelous job at getting that book out of your kid’s school library, but you probably also bumped up the sales for said book, too. How’s that for a Catch-22?
While I know about the majority of the “popular” banned books, particularly from the classics section, I decided to scour Google to see exactly what has been castigated and marked for the burn pile recently. Unsurprisingly, a good chunk of the matter has to do with LGBT+Q content and/or sexual content. Surprisingly, I didn’t find much in regards to straight out violent content.
Since Gender Queer and Flamer seem to be Notorious BOOKS #1 and #2 on the no-no list (according to PEN America), we’ll delve into the queer books first. All other discriminated peoples have been able to have their say on the pages, why can’t this community do so as well with impunity? If we are talking about these books simply being available on the school library shelves, for anyone, using their own free will, to check out and read, then there really shouldn’t be a problem. They are choosing to read LGBT+Q for whatever their reasoning may be. If it is required reading in a class- well, so are titles about racism. What’s the difference?
And for our elementary kids, it’s like the story of the black girl who tries to rub the “dirt” off the black girl in a picture book (she’s never seen a black girl in print before… ergo more racially diverse children’s books need to be made available). Same goes for children of same sex parents. They need to see their lifestyle on the pages, too. They need to know they are not “other” and can find their way of life condoned within their school library, too.
Next up. Sexual content. Okay, here I can kind of see valid points. Mom and Dad don’t want dear daughter nor beloved son to get too many ideas too soon in life. But you know what is ridiculously popular in the book world right now? SMUT! So should we be saying, ‘do as mom says and not as she reads’?
Okay, but honestly, I think learning about sex in all its various forms of good and bad is not a bad thing for children and teens to be learning. I’m not saying let’s teach our kinders about the act of sex, but maybe about those body parts and privacy. And then, as they get a bit older, about the whys and hows of it all. Books are a great way to introduce these kinds of conversations.
Sexual abuse of some form is so common and still swept under the rug all too often- maybe if we begin teaching about how human beings are sexual creatures and how to handle those interests and desires from knowledgeable and safe sources, like books coupled with a trusted adult or two, our world may just become a less sexually deviant place to live. Knowledge goes a long way towards making good choices. Books = Knowledge.
I really wanted to raise the comparison of the type of books getting banned versus all the violence we see on the screen, but this type of screen time is not played out in our school systems, which is where books get banned, so it’s not a balanced comparison. But really, maybe we should be putting less energy into fighting words on a page and more energy into fighting violence on the screens. I think the desensitizing nature of violence is such a larger issue for our influenced kids than a book meant to tell a story, teach a lesson, however harrowing it may be.
So, let’s all go binge a banned book or two. And then talk about it!
