9.22.2015

From Captain Underpants to Harry Potter to Lolita - The Importance of Books on the Banned Books Lists

On banned books lists
for teaching witchcraft & sorcery
Banned Book Week is next week with a specific focus on young adult novels—why they are important, why they should be read, discussed and taught in schools. As an author of young adult fiction, I believe in unflinchingly honest stories. For instance, in my dark fantasy, Dorianna, I address the temptation to manipulate in order to gain power, and the fallout from that. If teens have no access to cautionary tales that will shake them up, they may be more likely to impulsively delve into questionable behavior. But that is only one reason these novels are important.

In my college lit classes I've been teaching stories from The Arabian Nights and pairing them with Bruno Bettelheim's groundbreaking essay "The Uses of Enchantment." He was a psychiatrist who worked with severely disturbed kids, and a firm believer that they need stories with dark as well as light elements in order to fully understand the struggle of human life in all of its permutations.

Too brutal? Too honest?
Or too valuable to ban!
Some of my favorite books have been on banned lists. I’m talking about Lord of the Flies, where I learned about how dangerous “crowd-think” can be and To Kill a Mockingbird, which spoke to the perils of racism and the importance of standing up for what one believes to be just.

A banned book - Really?!
Currently, the most absurd book on the list has got to be the hilarious middle grade novel Captain Underpants. Really? Are you kidding? Since when do we forbid belly laughs over silly cartoon guys in undies? Why should this book be read? Easy answer. This book inspired a huge number of reluctant young readers to finally take the joyous plunge into fiction.

As we’ve learned from ancient Greek myths to Shakespeare to modern day, The Truth Will Out in one way or another. I recently traveled to Russia and saw firsthand the damaging effect of repression and bans on free speech. The most profound example of this was when I visited The Nabokov House Museum in Saint Petersburg. Vladimir Nabokov is the author of Pale Fire, Pnin, and his most famous and controversial book, Lolita.
Lolita by Nabokov
   
What astounded me there, were cases containing pages of his novels, sent around in secret mails during the time the Soviet Union banned his books. His readers were so devoted they risked their very lives to mail ten or twenty pages at a time to each other in order to keep on reading his transformational stories.

Banned books teach us about love, bravery, the dangers of bullying and racism and so many other things. What would students learn if libraries contained only whitewashed mealy-mouthed porridge? Bettelheim, and many teachers and writers are strong believers in not sugarcoating reality, which is what we do when we only provide the most mild, sanitized fiction. Here are a couple of his quotes that speak directly to why we cannot afford to ban books: “What cannot be talked about cannot be put to rest. And if it is not, the wounds will fester from generation to generation,” and “The ability to read becomes devalued when what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one's life.”

Bring on the harsh, sexy, terrifying, eye opening, mind-blowing books that alter and elevate us. 
     

26 comments:

  1. How do we learn to be better if we can't read dark? How do we know what it's like to live in different times? We should be allowed to read, learn, and form our own opinions.

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  2. I have had students at my school do readings from their favourite banned books. One of them, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime, is on their Year 10 curriculum. They were amazed! It isn't just dark books - it's unbelievable what some idiots ban or challenge.

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    1. How I loved that book. I hadn't realised it had been banned, and can only say, hiss and spit.

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    2. Very true, not only dark books. Clearly, Captain Underpants is not satanic. LOL.

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    3. Oops, that reply was meant for Sue's post.

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  3. Well said! Banning books has never made sense to me...

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  4. Excellent post! I can't believe Captain Underpants has been banned. And Lord of the Flies was my favorite book on my reading list in high school. I agree we need the dark as well as the light. If everything was sunshine and lollipops, that light would eventually be dull and the candy not so sweet.

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    1. Sunshine and lollypops would get super boring. In Candide, after they've been in Eldorado (the utopia) for a while they can't wait to escape.

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  5. I've heard that people who read tend to be more compassionate. The worst things can happen in books and make the reader stronger to know the hero/heroine found a way to overcome the bad things. Books help us learn more about the human experience in a way that just living cannot.

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    1. Yes, the characters in fantasy provide a safe way to identify and rail against symbols related to the real world. For instance, a child can be scared of a giant genie, but identify with the hero who defeats him. The giant genie for the child resembles his parents, or any grownup for that matter.

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  6. I so agree with you and I hate censorship. My mom lived under the Hitler regime and remembered how, at first, porn and other types of books were banned and burned but it didn't stop there. She had to hide what she was reading, first from the Nazi regime and then from the Communist regime before she escaped. She told me she would never censor because, although it sounds "good" at the beginning, it never ends, people feel the power and the need for control and will continue. How sad to ban To Kill a Mockingbird. I know, way back when, Canada was even thinking of banning Huckleberry Finn.

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    1. Birgit, wow, what a story! yes, it is a slippery slope for sure.

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  7. I was going to add something to the conversation about banned books, explicitly the fudging that the ALA does when it comes to books being "banned" or "challenge", but instead I'll offer a comment based on perspective as a parent of a 14 year old.

    I agree in principle that 99% of the books out there shouldn't be banned, but by the same token, a parent should reserve the right to ban certain age inappropriate books from the child's reading list until that child comes of age.

    To whit, do you think it makes sense for a 13 or 14 year old to read high end YA about topics that the parent may not approve of their child reading at that age?

    While my child is very much like me when it comes to reading (no topic was truly off limits but I did read what I felt comfortable in dealing with), a parent does have a duty to pay attention to what their child reads. However, it doesn't mean that they should take a wet blanket approach to a particular book. I believe if a parent is offended by a particular book, they should actually read the book before passing judgment on it.

    Father Nature's Corner

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    1. Good points you bring up. I DO think a parent has the right to oversee and "edit" out books that are NOT age appropriate for their child. That is very different from books being officially banned.

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    2. I absolutely agree that every parent has the right to decide whether a book is age appropriate for their child. What I don't agree with is that by banning books you take away that choice. As a part of a free society, no book should be banned.

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    3. I absolutely agree that every parent has the right to decide whether a book is age appropriate for their child. What I don't agree with is that by banning books you take away that choice. As a part of a free society, no book should be banned.

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  8. Seriously? Lord of the Flies. We did that one in grade 11. And Captain Underwear. I don't think they've been banned here in Canada. What I'd like to see banned is Fifty Shades of Gray.

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    1. Suzanne, haha, yup, I'd like to "unsee" 50 Shades.

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  9. Although I don't like banning books, I understand both Father Nature's and Suzanne's comments. I'm not a huge fan of graphically violent books, especially if they are sexually graphic and violent. However, I know that some people (hard for me to believe) don't realize that sexual violence takes place or how gruesome it is, so how do I know that those books won't create compassion in someone for victims of that kind of violence?
    The reality is, we are each responsible for our own reading material. For our kids, I think that part is up to each family and parents should have some kind of say. I did hold my kids back from reading the Uglies, Pretties, Specials cycle of books until age 13 - their older cousins had read them and I had read them, and I felt they needed to wait for a bit before they read books that contained a great deal about mental and physical modifications through plastic surgery, drug use, cutting, and violence. When they got to read those books, we discussed how the author was trying to portray that stuff in a way that would turn readers away from plastic surgery, drug use, cutting, and violence.
    Lord of the Flies, 1984, and Of Mice and Men are all terribly hard reads, but I also think they are terribly important reads. I had a bunch of inner city high school students identify with Lennie and George in a way that I never had as a teen. They had an understanding of the hardship presenting because of some of the hardship sin their lives.
    Sanitizing reading doesn't work because we can't sanitize life.

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    1. Tyrean, yes, see my comment to GB Miller. By all means, parents have influence over their teens until they are 18. That is different though, from banning the books altogether. We choose to live in a country with freedom of speech without "Thought Police" as exists in 1984!

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    2. Agreed! Banning books is scary. I don't want to actually live through 1984 or Farenheit 451!

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  10. Great Post!! Have you read Looking For Alaska by John Green? That book for teens had my eyes popping, but I loved it. Teens are not that sheltered, and they probably know more about sex and drugs then I ever knew. I recently received a bad review for my book because it has drug usage in it. (Although, the MC matures and kicks the habit)
    We can never make all people happy all of the time. We're all opinionated.
    And I agree with you Catherine about living in a country with freedom of speech, at least that's what I thought this country was made of....

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  11. It's a shame how many books have become "Disneyfied" too. The old fairytales were filled with horrors. Kids like to be scared and learn better if they're engaged in the story. Great post!

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    1. I agree. Although I enjoyed the new Little Mermaid, I also mourned the loss of the original tale, which was gut-wrenching and sad.

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