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Banned Books Week: Children’s Books and the End of Innocence

 

Something I see a lot in arguments about whether kids should have access to a particular book is that, as parents and guardians of children, we want to protect their innocence. If you live in a middle class family that was relatively intact, in an area where everyone seemed to be pretty much like you, controlling your kids’ reading might help to preserve that innocence for a while, but if you take a closer look at the individual families there, what you see is that under the surface, children have already faced, or learned about, some pretty terrible things. Even at school, they’ve faced lockdown drills, practice for what to do if the school is invaded by a shooter. The terrible things we live among are so commonplace, and many of us are so numb to them, that it may be difficult for adults to realize how affected some of our kids really are.

I was in the library with my daughter, who is a huge fan of the 43 Old Cemetery Road books and was looking for something similar. The librarian kept making suggestions and asking questions: is this one too dark? Are you looking for something scary, or something funny, or both? I can’t remember what it was the librarian pulled off the shelf that I looked at and said “I think that one might be too dark and scary for her”. My daughter put her hands on her hips, looked at me with exasperation, and said “Mom, my dad died. Nothing is sadder or scarier than that”.  Okay, then. Keeping kids away from the media doesn’t preserve their innocence. Fiction is a safer place than fact. And let me tell you, there is a lot of scary stuff, and a lot of death, in children’s fiction. Even Little Women spends a lot of time on death.

Children’s writing has gotten a lot edgier today, so I can see where some of the discomfort comes from, but we are living in an uncomfortable world. It is a scary place. We can respect that our kids are dealing with a lot of the same things that make the world a scary place for us, and help them choose the reading material they want, or maybe even need, in hopes that even scary books will give them a space in their lives for hope.

If a kid doesn’t think he’s ready to read a scary book, there’s time yet. And certainly there are choices that need to be made about what’s developmentally appropriate: for instance, most Holocaust fiction is not recommended for elementary students (the one exception I can think of is The Devil’s Arithmetic) but if you take your kids to The Sound of Music, you are going to have to come up with a reasonable explanation of who the Nazis were. But that means having dialogue with your child about that, not making choices for him or others to protect his innocence. For a lot of kids, that innocence just isn’t there anymore. Taking books out of their hands can’t save that. Talking to kids about them can help a lot.

For a partial list of banned children’s books, from picture books through Young Adult, go here.

Posted on October 2, 2015 by , Reply

Banned Books Week: You Oughta Know

The materials that have been publicly challenged since last year’s Banned Books Week haven’t all involved passing laws or pulling books from the shelves (although there have been some pretty dramatic incidents) Many of the challenges have involved unfairness (or perceived unfairness). A recent incident involved students at Duke University who publicly refused to read Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, an optional title on their summer reading list, stating that it was for moral reasons— it went against their religious beliefs. There are a lot of students who skip out of optional (and even required) reading, for a variety of reasons, but most of them aren’t writing about its immorality for the Washington Post. In the science fiction community, there was a lot of drama over the activities of the Sad Puppies, a group of writers who felt that traditional science fiction was being overwhelmed by diversity in both writers and writing, and challenged that by attempting to significantly influence the likelihood of winning a Hugo Award in favor of their own chosen candidates, with outrage on both sides (they failed). Another challenge involved a student at Crafton Hills College, who demonstrated outside the school along with her parents and friends when required to read Persepolis, Fun Home, Sandman Vol. 2, and Y: The Last Man Vol. 1 for an English class on graphic novels she had chosen out of fourteen options that would satisfy her graduation requirement. These three incidents all boil down to “I don’t want to read something new and different”.  But even if it’s not your own perspective, a willingness to be open to other perspectives, to listen to voices that aren’t your own, is important, because most people won’t always live in a world where everyone is just like them (except maybe the Stepford Wives). As Jessica Woodbury at BookRiot aptly puts it, “life is uncomfortable”.

I don’t often share it, but I follow censorship news outside the United States, too. And there are countries where the government really, truly, is a threat to freedom of expression. Internet access is extremely limited, there is no free press. People are fined, fired, expelled from the country, imprisoned, kidnapped, and even killed for their writing. In this interview with the exiled Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov, he talks about how the editorial board of a magazine that published chapters from his book was punished. And writing doesn’t have to be deliberately political to attract the government’s negative attention. It is a luxury to be able to say “this makes me uncomfortable, I don’t want to read it”, and as Banned Books Week comes to an end, let’s celebrate that it is something that, in this country, we can recognize publicly at all. So to those who object to reading anything that’s not exactly in line with life as they know it, I ask that you try something new. You have the option to stretch your mind and see what’s beyond your own nose… and you ought to know.

 

 

Posted on September 25, 2015 by , Reply

Book Review: The Shadow Cartel by Layton Green

The Shadow Cartel by Layton Green

Thomas & Mercer, 2015

ISBN-13:  9781477827819

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook.

 

Dominic Grey makes things happen. He works for a professor who conducts investigations of religious events for both private individuals and police agencies around the world. Dominic is the man on the ground. and it has been too long since he’s had an investigation. He has been spending his downtime teaching jiu jitsu to teenagers, just to keep himself from going stir-crazy. He finally gets a call. It is Nya; it has been over a year since he has spoken to her—collateral damage caused by a Zimbabwean religious investigation Grey had headed up. Things had gotten messy; he had not expected to hear from her again. Now, Nya needs his help. Her father’s goddaughter, Sekai, recently died from a hit of ecstasy at a party in a South Beach nightclub. When Grey looks into it, he finds that drug dealers in Miami are being ritualistically murdered.  He soon stumbles into a nest of witchcraft involving a knife-wielding blue Indian woman. The mystery deepens from there.

 

The Shadow Cartel is a great read that delves into the world of ritualistic murder and the religions that use it. I really enjoyed this book. It was fast-paced and grabbed me from the first chapter. I especially liked how the author wove in the horrific history of The Peoples Temple in Guyana, which was headed by Reverend Jim Jones. This gave the book an air of realism and authenticity that invested me in the story. The tone of mystery was very good as each religion’s involvement was uncovered. As a result, the suspense builds well and kept me going. The characters have distinct voices and it was fun to discover bits of their past as they were revealed. The plot is full of twists and turns that keep the reader guessing. The descriptions were full without going overboard. There is nothing in the story that was particularly disturbing or offensive; and the writing flows well. I have not read any of this author’s other work, but, The Shadow Cartel is a fun read. Recommended for adult readers.

 

 

Reviewed by Aaron Fletcher

Posted on September 4, 2015 by , Reply
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