Book Challenges
I've had book challenges on my mind since last week, when I learned that Cheryl Rainfield's Scars was being challenged in Boone County, Tenn. (If you hadn't heard about this, here's Cheryl's original post and her follow-ups 1, 2 and 3). ) If you follow me on Twitter and Facebook, you know I'm a staunch supporter of Speak Loudly, because I believe that young people need and deserve to be able to find the books they need.
Today I learned that a librarian in Vermont, a fellow member of the Green Mountain Book Award Committee, will be challenged in Town Meeting for "lowering the moral character" of her town with some of the books she has chosen. She is prepared to meet that challenge, and has staunch advocates and supporters not only on the committee, but among librarians throughout the state. I also learned that one book on the Green Mountain Book Award list for 2010-2011, Perry Moore's Hero, is being challenged by someone who feels it doesn't belong on a list of recommended titles for teens.
I understand that people challenge a book because they have concerns about it's appropriateness. But we only have the right to control the reading habits of two kinds of people: ourselves and our children. Our children. Not other people's. Ourselves. Not the rest of our community.
Books like Scars, or halseanderson 's Speak may be difficult and painful to read for those of us who haven't experience the trauma of their protagonists, but surely we can understand the role those books can serve for people, young people, who have. Because each of us, I'm willing to be, has that book that told us "You are understood. You are not in this alone. Someone has been where you are now and survived the pain, or shame, or humiliation, and lived to write this story to offer you understanding and empathy and an indication of one way out." For me, that book was Harriet, The Spy. When I first read it, I thought, 'how cool! I want to be a spy! I want to watch carefully and make note of what I see. I want to eat tomato sandwiches and take long, long baths.' What I didn't realize for many, many years, is that Harriet also showed me how to find my way as a very lonely girl.
Scars, Speak, Hero, Twenty Boy Summer, Letters from a Dead Girl, these are all books that would not have been written if someone hadn't felt compelled to write them. They wouldn't have been published if someone hadn't seen a need--more than a market--for those books by readers who would respond to these stories from the depths of their being. I was reminded of this last week, when I watched the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence's video for "It Gets Better." When Sister Risqué said that finding books in the library about people like her helped her feel less alone, I felt like pumping my fist. Books do make a difference.
These are difficult books to be sure, but so is life. These books can help make it seem a little less difficult by taking away the feeling of complete and utter isolation some teens feel. With books like these, young people can have the sense that while there may not be people like them nearby, they are there, out in the world.
Difficult books also help those of us who haven't had this particular experience develop an understanding of those who have. Books are an opportunity for vicarious experience, whether that is the delight of armchair travel or the difficulty of grief or trauma. More than plays or movies, books offer us the opportunities to live inside someone else's head, someone else's life.
A library that offers those difficult books does, in fact, reveal the moral character of its town. It shows that this is a town that cares about each of its citizens, no matter who they are or who they love. It shows that it understands the meaning of "liberty and justice for all."