It’s October, and that means it my favorite time of year. The temperatures are (finally!) dropping, the leaves are changing, and that special, indescribable scent of autumn is in the air. I’m not sure what makes fall so magical to me, but I always get the desire to read a totally engrossing fantasy like The Lord of the Rings, something that has immersive worldbuilding on a scale to equal Tolkien’s (at least, in my opinion).
But this time of year is also known for something else: Banned Books Week. According to the American Booksellers Association website (https://www.bookweb.org/abfe/banned-books-week), it’s normally held the last week of September, but this year it was in the first week of October.
In case you’ve been living in total isolation, Banned Books Week exists to bring attention to the pervasive existence of censorship, and I’m not going to beat around the bush: it’s not only pervasive, it’s insidious. It’s an affront to our freedom of expression.
What many don’t understand, though, is that with freedom comes responsibility. My rights only extend as far as I can stretch out my arm. And if my rights harm you, I’m not exercising them responsibly.
And when it comes to banning books, your right to not be offended by a book’s content doesn’t supersede my right of access to said book(s). Public libraries are supported by EVERYONE’S taxes, so having a particular segment of the public dictate—and it IS dictatorial—what I have access to there is abhorrent. Libraries are already limited by budget and shelf space. Why in the world do we want to limit them further?
And when it comes to school libraries, well, that’s a bit more complicated, but in the end, it still boils down to who’s paying the taxes. Yes, you have a say-so on the content there, and I would argue all day long that some material is simply not appropriate for some ages.
That’s where parents come into the picture.
No, let me rephrase that: it’s where RESPONSIBLE parents come into the picture. Because that’s what it comes down to, in the end: parental responsibility. If you don’t want your kid reading a certain book, tell them they can’t. Plain and simple.
Yes, I know. I was a kid too. Tell a kid they can’t do something and that’s like a magnet for them. They’ll find a way around your authority and do it anyway. Forbidding them something makes it far more attractive.
Here’s a weird idea—why not actually interact with your kid? Why not read the book yourself—or at least familiarize yourself with it enough to be able to discuss it intelligently and not emotionally—and then actually TALK to your kid about why you don’t think he or she should read it. At base, kids go after verboten things because they want to understand it. Satisfy their curiosity about it and it takes away the mystery and the allure. They might must find out it’s not as amazing a thing as they thought.
And you might learn something along the way. Nothing wrong with that at all. To quote F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
Denying others access to a book that offends you—and make no mistake, every book has the capacity to offend someone—is censorship and a restriction on others’ freedoms. Denying that access to your child simply on your say-so is disrespectful to their intelligence. Rather than simply banning it, explain it to them, then let them make up their own minds. They’ll respect you far more for that than they will you simply stomping your foot and saying, “No!”
I realize I’m probably preaching to the choir here. Most readers—and you’re probably not reading THIS if you’re not a reader—detest the idea of banning books. And many authors have a goal of getting on a banned book list somewhere. It’s good for sales, I guess, but if you review the lists of banned books, it seems pretty much every book has been banned at one time or another in on place or another. Besides, writing a book containing something that’ll intentionally get it banned verges on sermonizing for me, and I’ll put you in the DNF pile for that.
But maybe, just maybe, this will give you some ammunition against the book-banners, or even make you see it in a different light. And if I can do either one for even one person, it’s been a good day.
Happy Reading
