You do not want your book to be banned. No, really. You don’t.

Banned Books Week ended a few days ago, with a lot of smart people saying a lot of smart things about censorship. I didn’t think I had much to add to the conversation that hadn’t already been said, and better than I could have said it, but certain comments on Twitter, Facebook and various news outlets have been bugging me. Some of these comments are from book-banning advocates with bizarre assumptions about the intelligence of children and the motives of authors. Some of the comments are from people who make sweeping, sarcastic indictments of parents who challenge books without trying to empathize with those parents (though, admittedly, this kind of grace is haaaaaard). But the comments bugging me the most are from authors who say they’d love to have a book banned, as if censorship is somehow a good thing.

So, in the risk of beating a dead horse and/or preaching to the choir, and in an attempt to distract myself from the INFURIATING government shutdown, I wanted to make a few points:

1) Kids and teens read for the same reasons adults read.

Ask adults why they’re reading and you’d get a bunch of different answers: “Because it’s fun/thrilling/exciting,” or “because I got the chance to travel to a different time and place without leaving my house,” or “I like the way this character talks like a friend whispering in my ear,” or “This story makes me feel better about my own problems,” or “There are a lot of cool facts about cephalopods/beetles/dogs/cars/martial arts/art history/the Boxer Rebellion in it,” or, “I wondered what I would do in that situation,” or, “I wanted to know who committed the crime,” or, "It made me cry."

And if you asked kids and teens why they’re reading this or that book, you’d get the same kinds of answers. People of all ages read for knowledge, for entertainment, for comfort, for magic, for stimulation, for intellectual challenge. But there’s this crazy misconception among those who advocate book bans that anyone under the age of eighteen will view any novel simply as a set of instructions rather than as a story. And not only will kids and teens view novels as sets of instructions, they will follow said instructions like lemmings running off the edge of a cliff. So, if teens read, say, ELEANOR & PARK, they will not process the novel as a beautifully-written, deeply-moving story of love triumphing over hardship and instead start swearing like sailors, simply because the bullies and abusers in the book use a few four-letter words.

This is condescending. And wrong. I could yammer on about the intellectual capacities of teenagers, the tendency of younger children to set aside books they’re not emotionally ready for. I could also yammer on about the ways in which kidlit and teen lit reflect the real-life experiences of children and teens, that so many kids suffer hunger and crime and bullying and illness and so much worse every day, that so many of them have heard it all before. (The worst language I’d ever heard as a kid came out of the mouth of the 3rd-grader that lived across the street). But that’s not the point. The biggest thing that stories teach us is empathy, not only for the people living in situations a lot like ours, but also for people living in situations not at all like ours.

So, I have to wonder if empathy might not be the very thing that we need to cultivate in order to reach those who challenge books, because:

2) Sometimes the people who want to remove books from classrooms and libraries are scared but well-meaning people.

Most of these people are parents that are doing their best to protect their own children in a crazy and chaotic world. Parents can get so overwhelmed by the myriad forces that seem hell-bent on corrupting their kids, they will scratch for anything to blame for what’s wrong with the universe, even if it's just a book. In other words, these parents think that if they can ban swearing, sex, violence, ugliness in books, they can ban it in life, specifically in the lives of their children.

In this case, kindness and understanding is something we all should strive for even though challenges can turn us into giant squids of anger.

But then, sometimes these parents are scared but well-meaning people actively manipulated by quasi-religious and/or political leaders, or are themselves active members of groups with agendas that go far beyond book-banning. These groups advocate intolerance and bigotry. They perform “research” that consists of counting the number of four-letter words in books, completely removing that language from its carefully-crafted context. People who insist on plucking words and phrases out of context and offering them up as proof of Satanism or pornography or godlessness or whatever aren’t focused on literacy or comprehension. They do not care about creating life-long readers. They’re not interested in empathizing with anyone else. They are trapped in their own tiny hamster balls of hate.

Which leads me to my next point:

3) Sometimes the people who want to remove books from libraries and classrooms are bullies.

Maybe the bully is an individual parent who has decided that it is his/her job to parent everyone else’s children. Maybe the bully is a self-righteous school board member who wants to get on the news. Either way, the answer to a bully is NO. And it’s up to each community to say, No, you can’t remove a book off the shelf because you don’t like heartwarming stories about baby penguins. No, you can’t rip a book out of every child’s hand because some random whackadoo posted a list of “bad” books online and you’ve decided to purge your local library of all of them without having read any of them. No, we will not allow you to make decisions about books that affect the rest of us. No, your poor reading comprehension skills are not going to guide our book selections or discussions. No. No. NO.

Of course, sometimes the community in question doesn’t say no. Books are removed from classrooms, stricken from book lists, entire courses ripped from curricula. And the person who has the least say in the outcome is the author.

So, my last point:

4) If you are an author, you do not want your book to be banned or challenged. No, really. You don’t.

Sometimes the scared people — whether backed by creepy organizations or not — will lash out, viciously and personally. Sometimes they email you to tell you that you are a loathsome excuse for a human being. Sometimes they go to school board meetings and read random sentences or paragraphs from your book and publicly denounce you as a Satanist or pornographer or a child-abuser or just plain “inappropriate.” They talk to news reporters and question your motives for writing such pernicious trash — “Cash?” “Fame?” (To which I say, HAHAHAHAHAHA).

And sometimes none of this happens. Sometimes your book -- no matter how literary or valuable or well-reviewed or well-researched it is -- is quietly and without fanfare put in the restricted section, removed from the shelves altogether or not even considered for purchase in the first place.

This sucks.

Having a book challenged, hearing that people believe you are actively harming the readers you adore is a horrible, humiliating, dispiriting experience. And even if you are the sort of person with an alligator hide, or the sort always itching for a fight, you will not sell more books. You will not become more famous. You lose, and so do readers.

Which is not to say writers have any control over the responses to their books, or should spend all their time trying not to offend. (Anything worth reading is going to offend someone, somewhere). And it’s not to say that we stop fighting or stop talking about censorship when we see or experience it.

But do not wish for a book challenge. Do not long for the day you are disinvited from a speaking engagement. Do not yearn for the moment your book is carted from a classroom or stricken from a reading list. Do not anticipate a call from a reporter, or look forward to the day a fearful, angry parent takes your book to a school board meeting.

Do not imagine that any of this is easy, or that any of this is fun.

— Laura

Huh?

An update about Tanya Lee Stone's book challenge: it was successfully handled by the librarian and principal. The book will remain in the library. Yay!

But now, I'm confused about this. I can't for the life of me understand what would lead a parent to challenge Newbery honoree Susan Campbell Bartoletti's book, They Called Themselves the KKK . Yes, I can see that the material could be disturbing. But isn't that the point? Teenagers shouldn't be exposed to American history if some aspects are disturbing? Why teach history at all?

Yikes. I'm glad there are librarians like this one .

Every Week is Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week has come and gone, but it’s not as if the book banners have packed up their outrage and gone home. While my friend Tanya Lee Stone is enjoying the launch of her newest book , she’s also dealing with a challenge to her YA novel: A BAD BOY CAN BE GOOD FOR A GIRL. Apparently, she told me, a few parents think that this spare and elegant verse novel is nothing but a “how-to,” and want it removed from a high school library.

“I’m assuming they didn’t mean that the novel is a ‘how-to’ on making good choices, surviving betrayal and being true to yourself,” I said.

Tanya said, “Uh, no.”

After I had gotten all my sighing and sputtering and snarling out of the way, we spoke about how horrible* it is to have your work called inappropriate and your intentions deemed suspect. But of all the frightening things that can affect teens—crime, poverty, hunger, bullying, drunk driving, suicide, drug abuse, date rape — I have to wonder why certain people are so determined to be terrified of books.

Not all books, though. While sexuality in teen books drives some people nuts, we don’t seem nearly as disturbed by violence. Where are the ardent challengers of THE HUNGER GAMES**, for example? Is it because we believe that any book honestly dealing with war must contain some violent content? Is it because all the adults are too busy devouring MOCKINGJAY to complain? Or is it because we can see more perverse brutality on a single episode of Criminal Minds? Why are we so much more freaked out by a naked guy than a guy with an ax?

Tanya’s situation reminded of that man who wrote to his local newspaper to call Laurie Halse Anderson’s SPEAK “filth” and “pornography.” In his letter, he said, “This is a book about a very dysfunctional family. Schoolteachers are losers, adults are losers, and the cheerleading squad scores more than the football team. The cheer squad also gets their group rate abortions at prom time. As the main character is alone with a boy who is touching her female parts, she makes the statement that this is what high school is supposed to feel like.” Female parts? Really? If this man actually read the whole book, he didn’t understand a word of it. He couldn’t recognize the deep pain and suffering underneath the layers of irony, and took the narrator’s acid sarcasm literally. (Actually, the sarcasm seems to have gone entirely over his head, a problem more commonly experienced by eight-year-olds). He missed the entire point of the novel, which was the main character’s hard-won battle with depression in the aftermath of a crime. If teens have no trouble getting this book***, why was this grown man so scared and confused? Was he conflating his horror over the crimes depicted in the book with the book itself? Or is he just crazy?****

Book challenges are usually classified as battles between conservatives and liberals: “You conservatives just want to deny the reality of teens’ lives,” vs. “You liberals just want teens to read smut and learn how to be ho’s.” But I wonder if this is not so much a fight between conservatives and liberals as it is an argument over the purpose of reading. That is, people who view stories as a way to experience different perspectives and think through problems versus people who view stories, even fictional ones, as lists of “facts” or “instructions.”***** (Or worse, lots of boring, useless stuff punctuated by naughty bits that can be read aloud at school board meetings.)

Like all authors I’ve talked to, I believe that parents have a right to tell their own teens which books they can and can’t read. It’s only when one or two parents try to decide for everyone else’s kids that I get frustrated and sad. I have an in-law whose religious beliefs make a lot of books — including almost all of mine — off limits for her kids. When her son was young, she would request a different selection if she found an assigned novel objectionable. Some of the books she objected to were favorites of mine; A WRINKLE IN TIME was one, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD was another. It was hard to hear that her son wouldn’t be allowed to read books that had meant a lot to me when I was his age. Then again, I had to admire the lack of drama with which she asked for another choice. There were no letters to the paper, no press conferences, no self-righteous speeches, just: “Can he read something else, please?”

I think this lack of drama showed her kids that though she believed they weren’t ready for some of these books, she wasn’t freaking out over the books, she wasn’t scared of them. So, neither were they. They were curious about the books, maybe, but not scared. I believe it was Chris Crutcher who said that people who go ballistic over books dealing with sex or homosexuality or suicide or violence ensure that if/when their own children have to deal with these issues, their parents will be the last people they’ll ask for help. Why would they, when their parents are clearly so very frightened already?

And raising teenagers is frightening sometimes. But I believe you can be frightened and still act bravely. That means that you don’t start screaming porn! porn! porn! simply because you don’t like what a book has to say. If pornography can be defined as sex without context or redeeming social value, than books like A BAD BOY CAN BE GOOD FOR A GIRL and SPEAK are anti-porn, that is, they are powerful and empowering stories that put issues of sexuality, betrayal, rape, and depression in meaningful context. They help teenagers think through these issues without having to experience them themselves, yet offer solace to teens who have. To turn these books into examples of porn, you must become a pornographer, you must strip away the context, strip out the characters, the plot, the poetry, the pain, the irony, the intelligence, the heartbeat, the story. You must slice up the pages, dice up the paragraphs and the sentences until all you have left are a few words or phrases -- Underwear! Backside! -- you can use to titillate your friends.

You can do this to every book. You can do this to any book. (Clifford the Big Red Dog? Well, what do you mean by “big”? What do you mean by “dog”?)

I lurk on a listserv for YA librarians.****** Something written by one of these librarians – forgive me, I forget his name — has stuck with me. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like: “every day kids are living the kinds of lives we wouldn’t want them reading about.” We’ve watched the news, we’ve seen the reports of teens committing suicide after being brutalized or bullied or betrayed or outed, unable to envision a better future for themselves, or any future, for that matter. Do we really want take away stories of survival from teenagers struggling to survive?

Uh, no.



* It sucks. I don’t know any author who delights in a book challenge, or sells more books because of one. Unfortunately, I speak from experience; challenges are humiliating and depressing.

**Not hating on HUNGER GAMES, I like HG.

***Here’s a link to Laurie HA reading her poem called “Listen” that includes actual teen reader responses to SPEAK. Scroll down for the video.

**** Let's go with crazy .

***** Or maybe they assume that all people under the age of eighteen view books this way, which is just annoying. If teens read BAD BOY like a “how-to” then they read everything like a “how-to,” no? So why am I not seeing legions of girls perched in the oak trees around my neighborhood, picking off other kids with their homemade bows like Katniss Everdeen?

******No matter what some people would have you believe, librarians take into account the needs and wishes of their individual schools and communities when they purchase books for their collections. And every day librarians knock themselves out helping parents find books for their teens, no matter what kinds of requirements/restrictions those parents have. “I’m looking for adult novels for my 7th grader, but we don’t want sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, historical fiction or novels with bad language or bad behavior or cats or kissing. Must be between 272 and 365 pages. Blue covers only.”