{"id":24931,"date":"2018-03-20T08:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T12:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=24931"},"modified":"2018-03-20T08:00:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T12:00:50","slug":"a-bad-book-can-be-good-for-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=24931","title":{"rendered":"A ‘Bad’ Book Can Be Good for Readers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The children know.
\nThey have always known.
\nBut we choose to think otherwise: it hurts to know the children know.
\nIf we obfuscate, they will not see.
\nThus we conspire to keep them from knowing and seeing.
\nAnd if we insist, then the children, to please us, will make believe they do not know, they do not see.
\nThey are remarkable \u2013 patient, loving, and all-forgiving.
\nIt is a sad comedy: the children knowing and pretending they don\u2019t know to protect us from knowing they know.
\n\u2014 Maurice Sendak, preface to ‘I Dream of Peace’<\/em> (UNICEF, HarperCollins, l994)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr. Sendak was talking\u00a0about the hard truths of our world, from which\u2014if we are from a\u00a0relatively peaceful time, region, or culture\u2014we may be\u00a0privileged enough to attempt to shelter our children. He was speaking about death and loss, grief and war, and the other\u00a0major\u00a0subjects of life we don’t want to visit upon our children before they’ve had a chance\u00a0to have a few years free from worry. Except.
\nAs we know from our own childhoods,\u00a0for most of us, that time of unfettered innocence is a myth. Even in the steadiest of conditions and in the homes of the most even-keeled of families, children are exposed (via the news, the internet, the schoolyard, family friends, older siblings, cousins, etcetera and so on ad nauseum) to confusing, intriguing, worrisome, sad, mysterious truths that they wonder about and try to make sense of. They are aware of violence and drugs and smoking and drinking and sex far earlier than we\u00a0like to tell ourselves they are, and along with the snippets of what they actually understand\u00a0are vast and unpredictable fields of oddly filled-in blanks, misperceptions, and missing contexts. They know and they don’t know. We KNOW this. We just don’t want to know it.
\nBut books\u00a0can be safe conductors for children and teens, providing them insight, compassion, wisdom, humor, humanity and commonality in the face of big life. They can, as we\u00a0know,\u00a0serve as both windows and mirrors for readers, and for a child who is already experiencing some big struggles, encountering a kindred character can literally be a life-saver.
\nBooks are also a handy way for parents to invite questions and conversations, another way to share their own values with their children. This is why I am always surprised by the amnesia of adults, and the fear that makes them (us) shrink back from considering the\u00a0gift of books that allow young people to encounter experiences beyond their own, that allow\u00a0them to travel down roads navigating choices, and to see\u2014from a safe perspective\u2014how other hearts and minds make choices, and deal with the consequences of new or scary or intense experiences.
\nI am no proponent of traumatizing children with reading that will haunt them. The right book at the right time is a wonderful thing, and there are scads of resources out there\u2014reviews, teachers, librarians, booksellers, friends, and reading the book oneself, for crying out loud\u2014to help with the choosing. And happily, children’s and YA authors have made their life’s work a study of communicating thoughtfully and sensitively and humorously with kids through the written word, so the great books out there can be trusted\u2014not to mention again, pre-read by concerned adults.
\nBanning books\u00a0often undermines the very goals of the censors; it usually doesn’t shield the children from anything except an opportunity to understand the world and themselves a little better, and to think about the choices they themselves might make, similarly or differently, in the face of similar circumstances. What a luxurious and lucky way to encounter the challenging aspects of life.
\nOf course, parents have the right to decide what books come into their homes and even what books their kids can and can’t read in the classroom, if they have religious beliefs that preclude certain kinds of materials. But\u00a0one’s own restrictions cannot be visited upon other people’s children.
\nEven parents who think of themselves as broadly open about their children’s reading\u00a0sometimes make surprising decisions about their children’s reading. I have always been fascinated by the fact that\u00a0some\u00a0parents\u00a0who come into my bookstore are completely unfazed by their children reading books filled with violence, body counts,\u00a0and\u00a0casual or calculated cruelty, but are deeply uncomfortable when a book acknowledges differences in privilege and access, or includes a character who is struggling with a\u00a0real-life problem, no matter how gracefully and perceptively written about. These parents are\u00a0often the same ones who freak out at the\u00a0mere suggestion in a book that two teens are doing more than holding hands.
\nAuthors like Jason Reynolds and Kate Messner and Jacqueline Woodson and Zetta Elliott and Jennifer Holm\u00a0and Tanya Lee Stone\u2014and so many\u00a0other wonderful authors whose works\u00a0touch on topics that are lightning rods for school bannings\u2014address\u00a0real-life issues with sensitivity and the grace of a light hand on deep truth, understanding that children don’t need to be traumatized or shocked in order to see the broad range of human life truly and lovingly represented. Their books feature\u00a0fully rounded\u00a0characters and a range of human emotion, rather than reducing people’s identity to their primary struggle and creating simplistic solutions that bear little resemblance to real life.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nTwo years ago, middle-grade author Kate Messner was uninvited from a school visit in my own state because her book, The Seventh Wish<\/em>, addresses the truth that some problems, like a sibling’s addiction,\u00a0might be too big to fix just by wishing. It was a terrible loss to that school community that Kate\u2014who couldn’t be a more inspiring influence for kids\u2014was banned from that school. (Nota bene: more kids probably read that book than otherwise might have; that’s another frequent unintended consequence of banning.)
\nThis week, I was surprised to\u00a0learn\u00a0that Vermont author Tanya Lee Stone’s 2006 novel, A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl<\/em>, was removed from a high school library by the school board even AFTER the initial ban attempt was overturned. It’s a novel in verse that tells the story of three girls who are involved (serially, not polyamorously) with the same guy, a good-looking charmer who turns out to be a player. The girls\u00a0differ in confidence levels, expectations, past experiences, and desires, and they all handle their doomed relationships differently.\u00a0They respond to the boy’s\u00a0sexual overtures with varying levels of enthusiasm, resistance, and regret\u00a0\u2014 and all three find a very satisfying way to reclaim their own power and senses of self. Like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak<\/em>, it’s a great book for teens: part cautionary tale, part girl-power anthem.\u00a0It’s difficult to believe a high school\u00a0would ban it. Sadly but truly, teenagers are encountering these pressures and choices long before high school nowadays. Isn’t it\u00a0valuable to help them assess potential relationships and just maybe, possibly, avoid\u00a0a few of the stumbles, humiliations, and pitfalls of being a teenager? Weren’t we, as youth ourselves, wildly grateful to Judy Blume for giving us a window into the things\u2014puberty, sex\u2014that we had to protect grownups from knowing that we knew (or were wondering about)?
\nTanya wrote about the banning,<\/p>\n

“It’s never the right time to take power away from girls’ voices, but now is a particularly bad time, don’t you think?<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
“This is not just a book banning. The ENTIRE point of this book is to empower girls to be in charge of their own bodies and sex lives and relationships.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
“The National Council Against Censorship (NCAC) contacted me this past November when [the book] was first being challenged in Cody, Wyoming. [We] supported the librarian with materials such as critical acclaim and honors for the book, an article\u00a0[in VOYA] on the importance of sex in YA novels<\/a>, and several snippets of emails I have received over the years (keeping them anonymous) from girls thanking me for writing this book and letting me know that it helped them get out of, or avoid, bad situations. The vote eventually came back in our favor and the book was kept on the high school shelves.\u00a0But a couple of weeks ago, that resolution was ignored by the school board who voted 5-1 to get rid of the book and warned “there would be others.”<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
“Then I started hearing from several people in that community. The first one wrote to tell me he wanted to let me know I had support but that the town was too small for him not to remain anonymous. Then I heard from a woman who hadn’t previously been on Facebook but created a page about book banning and censorship of this book because it was so upsetting to her. Her name is Dominae […] and she took out classified ads in\u00a0five local news sources offering to give the book away for free<\/a> to anyone who wanted to read it. From there, it continued. Lots of responses to her ads\u2014both positive and negative\u2014and lots of people who wanted the book. Stores in the area reordered. Random House reprinted. […] Public libraries reordered. A student reporter got in touch with me for an interview. I even got a visit request from the public library system to have me come address the public and also have a yard party!”<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

It’s a troubling story at a turbulent time in our nation’s history. Tanya’s editor, Wendy Lamb, wrote a statement in support of the book:<\/p>\n

“A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl<\/em> is an honest and sympathetic portrayal of high school life, and what can happen when girls face pressure to have sex. Now, when the #MeToo movement has exposed the prevalence of sexual harassment, and women\u2019s anger at harassment, A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl<\/em> is more significant than ever. Readers discover that the book is about much more than sex\u2014it\u2019s also about being self-aware, standing up for yourself, confidence, and the importance of friendship and real love. This book sparks discussion about vital issues; among them, sex versus love, and the emotional pitfalls of having sex before you are ready. Our hope is that readers will feel empowered by the book, and that it will help prepare them to make the right decisions.<\/p>\n

“Parents have the right to forbid their children from reading a book. But they do not have the right to forbid others from reading it. Young readers need to know the truth.”<\/p>\n

And the truth is that young readers know some things about this world, and the best we can do is\u00a0 to try to help them understand and navigate that world as healthily and buoyantly as possible. I think we have some amazing guides in our literary world who can help with that task, and I hope we booksellers and librarians and teachers and parents can find the right books at the right time for those young readers.\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It can be so helpful for youngsters to encounter life’s big topics in books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}