Saturday night book talk

[discountsatori]

Hi there, Livejournal. Please note that it is after midnight on Saturday night / Sunday morning and I am sitting here at home, alone for all "intensive purposes"* (don't you hate it when people write that?), since Adam and Gus are sleeping -- Adam because he has to get up at 4 for work, and Gus because he is a dog. I'm just noting this for

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[discountsatori]

I love this line from that article:

“The word is just so delicious,” Ms. Patron said. “The sound of the word to Lucky is so evocative. It’s one of those words that’s so interesting because of the sound of the word.”

Honestly, I think a lot of the uproar is because the word is used on the first page. If the dog had gotten bit on his scrotum on p. 133, buried somewhere in the middle of the page, I bet there wouldn't be as many challenges from parents. I remember reading Judy Blume's Blubber when I was eight or nine, and there are several mild swears in the middle of that book. That was the first time I'd read those words in a children's book, and I was amazed that they were there -- yet they felt hidden, somehow. Blubber doesn't rank as nearly as high in the "challenged books" lists as some of her other books.

The other day, I was reading the blog of an older man (probably around my dad's age) who was also an aspiring YA author. He made an argument about banning / challenging books that, to me, came across as very pro-censorship, but, to him, was not. Basically, he said that if a book is available somewhere, then it's not really "censored," even if it is taken out of one library. I.e., so even if The Higher Power of Lucky is taken out of my local library, as long as I can get it from another branch of the library, or from the bookstore, it's not really a "banned book." Hardly anyone would come out and say, "Yes, I'm pro-censorship!", but perhaps this is the type of argument that librarians and parents who challenge books use. I should note that this writer guy thought that any books with "filthy language" had no place in school libraries.

[sirensfall]

It is generally school libraries that are banning it. . . and it could be a preventitive measure (not having to deal with outraged parents etc) but I still don't agree with it. It is award winning, so it obviously has some merit. . . It is silly to ban it for one word.

[discountsatori]

I totally agree! And now I am really curious to read the book.

[joellevand]

I remember Neil Gaiman once saying at a book reading that rather frequently, middle school librarians would come up to him and tell him the secret joy they felt stocking Stardust in YA section of their school libraries, knowing that the word "fuck" appears in the first chapter. Somehow, this book seems to never end up on the banned list, possibly because it's fantasy, but more likely because they read the first few pages of a book then skip to the end before deciding whether to ban something -- when they bother to read it at all.