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.

I don't think you really read that...

Have you ever really looked at the reasons some books have been banned or challenged? Aside from being entirely subjective and ridiculously conservative (and THAT is really saying something, coming from a Mormon housewife who was raised in a red state) some of them are simply not true. 

I simply cannot believe that people who actually read these books got such a different message than I (and most of the world) did. For example:

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien was burned in Alamagordo, NM (2001) outside Christ Community Church along with other Tolkien novels as satanic. Satanic? I've read these books, I don't know, four or five times all the way through. I've read the Hobbit at least that many times. I've seen the movies twice that many times. Do you remember how many times I remember mention of Satan? Zero.

In fairness, Tolkien was a devout Catholic (and was primarily responsible for introducing C.S. Lewis to Christianity- though Lewis joined a different sect) and his religious viewpoints certainly color his writings. If you look close enough, you can see metaphors for creationism, the Atonement, resurrection and prophecy. And yes, there are shadows of Satan's adversarialism in the story as well. But guess what? In order for there to be a Satan-type character, there must also be a Christ-type character. And there is.

Not that our friends at Christ Community Church in New Mexico would know, though, as I'm quite certain that anyone who thought the main theme of this story was "satanism" did not read this series. Pity. They are considered to be the first great epic fantasy novels of the modern era, and Tolkien himself is often referred to as the grandfather of modern fantasy.

Not to mention they turned into some kick-butt movies.

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Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

This is great. Twilight has been banned in different places for different reasons. In 2009, and Australian public school system banned the entire Twilight series. All four books. They even went so far as to prohibit students from bringing their own copies or discussing them while on school property. Their reason? It's too racy.

Now, let's skip over to various school districts and libraries in the U.S., where Meyer's series has been challenged because it is religious propaganda. They claim that Meyer's chaste and virginal characters choosing to reserve sex for marriage was a strictly conservative Christian- and more specifically, Mormon- notion and that these books were being used to brainwash teenagers into not having premarital sex.

Which is it, book banners? Too sexy or too chaste? It can't be both. I happen to think it's neither. Again, these are books that I've read probably a half dozen times, cover to cover. These characters (who are either legally adults or immortal for 3 of the 4 books) are in love, but they do refrain from premarital sex entirely. As with Tolkien, Meyer's religious viewpoints color her writing. If you want, you can see Mormon doctrines of eternal life, eternal marriage and bodily health in several forms. But you have to really, really be wanting to see it.

The bottom line is, however, that the camp who thinks the books are too racy obviously has not read them. The sex between consenting, married adults is all "off screen". The camp who thinks the books are propaganda could not have read them either... there simply isn't enough "message" to find these to be brainwashing in any way.

The movies were a little less kick-butt. Maybe, kick-knee. Or kick-ankle.

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Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

A parent in Georgia challenged the entire Harry Potter series based on the fact that the books "promote the Wiccan religion."

OK, so I guess this one could be categorized as either "I don't think you really read that" or "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Although, I think it's both.

Wicca is a religion (which, last I checked, we all have the right to practice however we choose) that bears about as much resemblance to Harry Potter as a kiwi does to a watermelon. Sure, you could find a few points of unimportant similarity, but in reality, nobody would ever confuse one for the other.

These books are also listed as some of the most banned books of the last two decades, with "satanism and occultism" listed as the main reason for the challenges. Satan? Other than the mention of Christmas and Easter, and a graveyard next to a church, there is no religion of any kind in these books. I should know. I've read all three thousand or so pages probably 10 times. The movies are in heavy, heavy rotation in our house, thanks to my son's obsession. He recently told me "I love Harry Potter movies, but I also love Harry Potter books." Me too, kid. Me too.

As for the movies, they alternate between kick-butt and kick-knee. Seriously, who else is totally and completely dying to see Deathly Hallows?




Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

This book about how statistics can be distorted and misused (basically) was challenged and nearly banned in 2006 in Arlington Heights, Illinois. The book does talk about some of the less-than-savory aspects of life, but it's presented in a watered-down documentary form, and I cannot think for the life of me why this would be so offensive as to have a school board try to have it removed.

I do KNOW for a fact that the woman who tried to have this book banned did not read it. She said so. She read a few excerpts on the internet and decided to crusade to have it removed from all public school shelves.

Lovely.


The best example I can find, though, is this: In 2005, the Wilsona school district in California presented a list of books they "recommended" to the elementary school children in their district. The parent-teacher committee requested that 23 of the books be removed. For some, they listed (weak) reasons for removal. Others were requested for removal because "they were books the members of the committee were unfamiliar with and didn't know whether they promoted good character or conflicted with textbooks."

Yup. The school district requested to remove books from the recommended list (not the required list, even) because they, personally, were not familiar with them. "We haven't read these, and we just don't trust the teachers, parents, former students, book store workers, book store owners, authors and critics who say these are good books."

I mean, honestly, isn't THIS the goal here, people:

guardian.co.uk

 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. 


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

Think for yourself and let others to do the same. - ALA

The Hobbit

Casting rumors for The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien are in full swing, and I am throwing myself into the fray. 


Bilbo Baggins, played by Ian Holm in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is much, much younger in this story. This should go to a big name actor, because this man is the star of the show. I saw James McAvoy tossed around on fan forums for awhile, and while the noise about him has died down, I like this choice. He's good and pretty underrated. 

Thorin is the dwarf that does most of the talking and interacting with Bilbo. There are 12 dwarfs in this story, and casting all of them would be 1) annoying and 2) unnecessary. There are not a lot of little people in this world, particularly those that are actors, so trying to assign a name to each character would take too much time, and since probably 10 would have no lines or be cut from the story altogether, it's a pointless effort. Thorin is our main guy, and I think Warwick Davis should play him. Yes, I know that he's a very, very busy man. But he's good. There's a reason some actors are in demand: they are worth it. 

Smaug is the dragon that is hoarding all the treasure that our adventurers are after. I think they are going to go the CGI route and use just a voice. A voice of evil. Malignancy.  Tim Curry is the best man for the job. (did you see FernGully?)
 

Bard is the man-hero at the end. He gets appointed to be their king and leader after defeating Smaug with his trusty arrows. I want to see Jeremy Piven just because I want to see him in way more stuff.

Do you want to see Andy Serkis (Gollum), Ian McKellen (Gandalf) and Hugo Weaving (Elrond) reprise their roles? Or should they go to "younger" players?

Agree? Disagree? Post your thoughts in the comments. 
Images: Google Images