Happy Banned Books Week!

No, I have not radically changed my personality in honor of today, the real beginning of senior year (a.k.a. the first time I've whipped out my rain boots). Celebrating Banned Books Week doesn't mean that you seek to have books banned. Rather, it honors books that have, at one time or another, been banned or challenged. How do you do that, you may ask? The New York Times has a few helpful suggestions. I, of course, was particularly drawn to number five. That's "blog all about it," for those of you too lazy to click on a little linkage.

I, unlike those I admonish (lovingly!), am not afraid to click on links, and so I fell with glee upon those offered up by the Times, and followed one to this list the ALA has compiled of the Top 100 (by now we all know how much the de Plumes like top whatever lists) of 2000-2009. I was surprised (but not too surprised) at how many of these books were books for young readers--children and young adults--and how many of these books were either classics or just out on shelves when I was young. The time frame is right for it, of course; I was eleven for the majority of 2000.

The other thing that surprised me (but not too much) looking at this list was how many of the books were, for lack of a better word at this hour on a Monday night, boring. Innocuous, would probably be better. Well-written, for the most part, but they didn't capture my imagination or become one of my legion of childhood or continuing obsessions. Julie of the Wolves was just okay, everyone always liked The Giver more than I did, and Go Ask Alice was just pulpy.
Of course, To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the best books I've ever read. The movie holds up surprisingly well too. His Dark Materials, while not my favorite Philip Pullman series, deserves recognition, at least the first two books. And then there's Beloved and Slaughterhouse-Five and The Kite Runner and Fahrenheit 451 (oh the irony) and A Wrinkle in Time and...oh okay fine. They're not all innocuous. Not at all. But my point remains. Some of them are and a lot of them are children's books and what exactly does this mean, anyway?

And then there's Speak. Speak is a young adult novel about a girl who is sexually assaulted and stops talking. Seeking to silence that particular story follows the worst kind of logic. Yes, the story is upsetting. It's supposed to be. It's also educational and well-crafted and miserable and entertaining and plot and character driven (something not all "adult" novels can claim) and shocking and, hopefully, thought-provoking. And it has a happy ending! So what's the problem? Are we supposed to pretend these things don't happen? That can't be right. Is it that they're afraid this book might fall into the hands of younger children? Now we might be getting somewhere.

Yes. I read Mists of Avalon before I was ready. I read a lot of things before I was ready. But "not ready" doesn't mean that I was warped and horrified and unable to go on to healthy teen years and adulthood. "Ready" just means that you understand what you're reading and that you can think critically about it and engage the way you're supposed to. By that definition, I would argue that the majority of those seeking to ban these books aren't ready to read the books on the list.

There are books I'm still not ready for. I'm just about to start the fourth book of a quartet that has me constantly questioning myself and the author and what I expect books to do and what I expect authors to owe their readers (and no, this isn't the Raj Quartet; it's the Red Riding Quartet; I seem to have a problem with quartets) and what it's okay to say and what violence it's okay to depict and why I'm reading it and...I could go on. But I'm getting there, and one of the joys of reading is re-reading and, finally, understanding. If banning books is about protecting children (and, I mean, what isn't?) then that strategy needs to be rethought. The Top 100 list the ALA provides is full of books about historical wrongs (some of which have yet to be made right), people of different races and sexualities and religious beliefs, alternate realities, realistic depictions of puberty, and, in the case of Goosebumps, some really silly scary stories.

What they are is complicated. What they are not is dangerous. Not by themselves. Children can tell the difference. Give them some credit.