What are we protecting them from?

Most book challenges come from one source: parents.

Parents want to protect their children from the big, bad, scary world, and limiting their access to offensive reading materials is near the top of the to-do list in this quest. And, in their never-ending quest to rid the world of any and all dangers ever to be posed to their children, they are sometimes a little... overzealous.

For instance:


The Diary of Anne Frank has been a perennial favorite for book banners ever since it was printed.The reason? The sexual discussions, of course. This was the diary of a young, teenage girl and she wrote her feelings and her experiences. If you have teenagers, I dare you to get a hold of their diary/ journal and read what's in their head. Even if they aren't doing something immoral, you can bet your bottom dollar that they are thinking, wondering and maybe even hoping.

premiumhollywood.com

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott was pulled from school shelves, without any reason given to the public. Speculation abounds that the reason is that the story is anti-feminist. I'm sorry, but the era in which this story is set was anti-feminist. Sheltering our children from the truth of history robs us of the opportunity to teach them the difference between "then" and "now."

I can certainly appreciate parents wanting to teach their little girls that they can grow up to be more than a way-too-young trophy wife to a boring old guy that they aren't in love with. But, what better way to teach than by example? And, really, would our young women even understand how far we've come if they don't know where we started at? All kinds of lessons to be learned.

autostraddle.com

 Judy Blume is one of the most consistently banned authors in the States. I can honestly say that I know I read all of her books, but I remember Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. best. I remember reading her books around the age that most girls do, 10, 11, 12 years old, something like that. I also remember very distinctly the feeling of normalcy her books brought to mind. If this book was about a girl my age buying a bra, getting her period, wanting to kiss a boy and wondering about God's relationship with her and other people in her life, that meant I wasn't all that weird. I saw myself in this character, and it was amazing.

Parents want this book removed from school shelves for exactly the reasons I listed above; it deals with "mature" issues such as puberty. Puberty. Listen, mommies and daddies of the world: Your little girl will grow up. She will go through puberty, the inexorable march of time will see to that. WHY do you want to keep the details a secret? Information is power, and the more she knows, the more comfortable she will be with it.

Side note: when I googled this book to find a picture to put here, I got the most random selection of pictures ever. A lot of covers, obviously, but stills from Scrubs, Full House, Daria , Transformers and Twilight all popped up. Along with some really, really random shots. Including this:

The reader who best comes up with a reason as to why this was in the images section for this title wins... well, some laughs, some respect and some link love.

Along the same lines, in 2005, one of the most banned books of the year was It's So Amazing! A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies and Families. The reason? It is sexually explicit. Call me crazy, but a sex education book needs to be sexually explicit, no? The whole point is that is explains how it all works. There's an old Paula Poundstone joke about printing sex education books without being sexually explicit: Just show a picture of a fully clothed man, not touching a fully clothed woman with a caption that says "And then they... you know."

OK, so this particular sex education book is a little irreverent. It's drawn in a comic-book style, and I guess that makes people uncomfortable. Like it's normalizing sex... wait a minute...


A Wrinkle in Time is one of those books that most kids love. It also is one of the most banned books of the 1990s. The reason? It depicts a battle between good and evil that exposes children to a religious idea. The same argument has been made about the Harry Potter series, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings.

I cannot for the life of me understand how a parent would want to shelter their child from the idea of good versus evil, and that fighting for good is worthwhile. None of these stories, save three of the seven Chronicles of Narnia, is overtly religious. In each story, the characters find strength in their goodness. Isn't that the core of what you're trying to teach your kids?

Baffling. Utterly baffling.

CelebrityWonder.com

And, last but not least, my favorite:
In 1978, the Eldon, Missouri library banned the dictionary. THE DICTIONARY. Their reason? Well, that should be obvious. It contained definitions of sexually explicit, profane and derogatory words. They weren't the only ones either. It happened again in California in January of this year.


THE DICTIONARY. We wouldn't want children learning the meanings of words. THAT would be terrible. Just terrible.


Don't get me wrong, I have children, and I am scared of what they will encounter and when they will encounter it. But the reality is that my job as a parent is to prepare these innocent little people to be adults someday. Thinking, reasoning adults who can handle the situations- both good and bad- that life throws at them.

I want to ask again: what are we protecting them from? Growing up? Learning how the world works?

 For more information about challenged and banned books, please visit the American Library Association. For more information about Banned Books Week, please visit BannedBooksWeek.org. 

Think for yourself and let others do the same - ALA

Please share this post, or write your own post about banned books.