Banned Books Week and a Note on Censorship

This week is Banned Books Week. Some of my all-time favorites books have been challenged including Where the Wild Things Are and To Kill a Mockingbird. I am opposed to censorship. However, as a lover of children's and young adult literature, and as a mother, that doesn't mean I want my kids reading anything and everything.

One of the problems with censorship is that it gives the books being challenged a lot more media attention. And everyone knows that it's human nature to seek out what we're told we can't have. Mark Twain's books were often censored and he wrote a letter to his editor about one such censorship saying that more books would sell now that it wasn't available on library shelves.

Another problem with it is that I don't want anyone telling me what I can and cannot write or read, so I have no right to do the same to others. 

But that doesn't mean I want my kids (or even myself) to read books regardless of content. I often like young adult literature more than adult literature partially because of the writing and partially because, at least once upon a time, there was less content that made me uncomfortable. Sadly, I've encountered more and more young adult literature with content that I don't want to read. (One book had a college freshman with a very casual approach to underage drinking. Another was a fairy tale that had explicit sexual content for no apparent reason.) Which is why I think it's important to know what your children are reading.

To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have both been frequently challenged because of racial content. I would argue that they do not promote racism and it's an important topic to learn about and discuss with our children as they get older. There are many excellent books on the Holocaust. I don't want my six-year-old reading them, but a sixteen-year-old needs to learn about that dark part of our world's history--and learn from it. Books that contain themes of racism, war, abuse, violence, rape, drugs, crime, and even sex have an important place if they open up frank discussions on the topic for young adults who are emotionally mature enough. Those things are out there, and I'd rather my children learn about them from me and from good literature that warns us against them (not advocating them) than have them learn about it from peers and social media.

There is more and more explicit content in young adult books these days. And I put those ones down without finishing them and would never recommend them here. But there are some books that I will cover with content or themes to be aware of so that parents can make a choice about when they want to talk about those things with their children. I will always state if there are themes in the book that not all children are ready for emotionally, and then you can decide for your child if they are ready for that.

So to celebrate Banned Books Week, I'm not going to pick up or advocate books that promote things I disagree with. But I'm going to read Where the Wild Things Are to my children today without once worrying that it's too dark and disturbing for them.