Are we really talking about this again?

Here's the latest in the book censorship wars: a teacher in New Rochelle, NY (very near to my former hometown) has removed a section of Girl, Interrupted from students' copies of the book because the material was "of a sexual nature that we deemed inappropriate for teachers to present to their students."

Huh?

Listen, I haven't read the book. But these are twelfth-graders. I hate to break it to anyone, but these kids already know about sex. And someone thought they should read this book--not selections from it, but the book. And now they can't. Personally, I find underage marriage and suicide pacts offensive, but that doesn't mean high schoolers shouldn't read Romeo & Juliet. And so on.

Link from Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Book Banning? No!

John Green, author of the fabulous, award-winning Looking for Alaska (and the equally wonderful An Abundance of Katherines), finds himself in the odd position of having to explain that he is not a pornographer. Check out his video, below, and then write a letter, if you feel so inclined.



For what it's worth--as I wrote to John myself a few minutes ago--I read James Kirkwood's far edgier boarding-school novel Good Times/Bad Times in high school. I also read Romeo and Juliet, The Scarlet Letter, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, to pick three almost at random. All have far more "edgy" content--premarital sex, unwed motherhood, suicide pacts, rape, and the like--and no one uttered a word of complaint, as far as I know. Edgy content, after all, is what teenage life is like. And the point in Alaska, as John makes clear in the video (and as is blindingly obvious to anyone who has read the book) is that physical intimacy is no substitute for emotional intimacy. In fact it can detract from it.

John is not a pornographer. Don't ban books. Period.

Didn't I just talk about this?

OK, it's not enough to write columns about kids having to read too many depressing books, now someone wants to mandate happy endings.

Can I have the job of defining "happy"? Because for me, The Little Mermaid (yes, even the Disney version) would be right out.

seen first at Big A, little a.

again with the complaints

Apparently The Christian Science Monitor hasn't been keeping up. Now it's their turn to publish yet another complaint about how kids are being forced to read depressing books.

Didn't anyone else just revel in depressing books as a kid? I know I did--nothing like a good cry over a book rather than your real life. And for a professor of creative writing to admit to not actually reading the books in question...well, the argument fell apart right there for me. If not before.

Ah, well, at least she's not just making a list of the dirty words. (Why, yes, it is Banned Books week! And no, I'm not linking to parents against bad books in schools, though I do find their website highly amusing...when I don't find it scary.)

copyright and fair use

What would I do without child_lit? This morning this gem came through the listserv; enjoy!

don't ban books

I'm too busy to blog, really--I have a stack of grading that is not getting any shorter. (The fact that I am not actually reading the exams might have something to do with that.) So I must address that.

But in the meantime, read about Maureen Johnson's novel, The Bermudez Triangle, which I now want to read (after the exams, of course) and why some people think you shouldn't read it (scroll down on that last one for the mention of pusillanimous twerps; keep going to read about some particularly, um, interesting Utah Republicans). Three cheers for librarians!

(Note that all above links are anti-book-banning. I do not link to book-banners.)