Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than people trying to prevent other people from reading a good book simply because they find the book offensive for whatever reason. Today marks the end of Banned Books Week, a week meant to highlight the very books that so many people have found offensive over the years.
The irony, of course, is that when you attempt to ban a book (or anything else for that matter), you simply make it more appealing to the masses purely for the illicitness implied by the ban. Instead of banning a book they find offensive, the prudish readers out there should praise its literary quality because that will make it a sure bet that no teenager alive will pick up the book after hearing that it has great literary merit.
Usually that is the audience that the well-meaning, yet misguided, adults are trying to prevent a book from reaching -- teenagers -- because God forbid that they read about anything even remotely bordering upon reality or the facts of life that they will soon have to face head on. I don't understand the need to put a ban upon a book; instead of that, the adults should use the book as a learning tool that can open wonderful discussions with their children. Personally, I think most people who jump on the banning bandwagon haven't even read the very books they find offensive -- they've been told what the book is about, and they don't like it, so instead of doing the work required to actually read the book and process the information within it, it's just easier to demand that the book not be available to their children or to anybody else's for that matter.
My second all-time favorite book is "To Kill a Mockingbird," and it is a novel that continues to be challenged and banned. This is a book that should be read by every high school student in America -- in my opinion, of course. This is not a book that should be denied to others simply because a few adults can't stand the idea of their children reading about rape and racial injustice in the South (because, of course, these things never happened nor do they continue to happen, so why in the world should we read about them --sarcasm dripping here).
The qualities that make a book a candidate for being banned are usually the very qualities that make it a great book and one that should be read and discussed. The discussions that can follow after a group of people read a controversial book are the types of discussions that need to take place in classrooms and in churches and in libraries and in living rooms across the nation.
We are supposed to be a country that supports individual freedom; yet, we have people who deny others the chance to read books simply because they don't like the content of those books -- this behavior goes against everything for which the U.S. stands.
This doesn't mean that common sense can't prevail in classrooms -- we don't need "Fifty Shades of Grey" becoming required reading in high school (but who's to say it couldn't be a great novel for discussion in some university course somewhere) -- however, parents and other patrons should not jump in shouting FOUL every time they hear that a controversial book is being read in their school. Instead, they should take advantage of the situation and read the book along with their child and discuss the themes within it according to their own belief system.
Too often, I believe, strongly religious adults or over-protective parents -- as well-meaning as they might be -- only do more harm when they try to prevent kids from experiencing things. What better way to learn about the horrors of slavery, rape, torture, incest, and other types of brutality or mind-control than through a book? When we read about something, we learn about it, and hopefully, when we see how horrifying something was, we don't repeat the same mistakes. Would they rather that their children learn the lessons the hard way by actually experiencing bad things first-hand and then talking about them with their kids, or would they prefer that their kids see things through somebody else's eyes (the protagonist of the book) and then be able to discuss those things together and understand them?
I encourage my daughter to read any book she wants. She is now a teenager, and she loves to read. She asks me about things she doesn't understand, and I do my best to explain them. This way, she learns something, and I learn about her. I would never think to deny her any book, just as I would never allow anybody to deny me any book I wanted to read.
So, to those out there who believe in banning books, I say -- Shtick This!
