Banned Book Week is coming to an end, and hopefully you found a banned book or two to add to your tbr piles (I know, like you needed more books to read!).
I think the main reason adults want to ban certain books is because they're afraid of the book's influence on their children's minds. Now, I've read several books this week, so I'm exhausted. I've been a recently fired librarian vampire, fell in love for the first time with a girl (did that last week too!), discovered three corpses while trying to collect pottery, found out that my parents were Non-Conformists fighting the evil government that forced me to tattoo my wrist on my sixteenth birthday, and today I was a gay penguin. Tomorrow I plan on being a hypnotist being stalked by an evil child, and King of the North, or maybe a ghost in New Orleans.
Oh, wait. Nope, I've just been ME this week. I've read quite a bit about librarian vampires, lesbians, Nancy Drew wannabes, underground freedom fighters, and gay penguins. Reading about these subjects hasn't changed me as a person, hasn't changed my belief systems, hasn't even prompted me to change my nail polish (or actually put any on, my nails are in a terrible state right now!). And I read just as much today at age 34 as I did at 14.
So book banners, just take a deep breath. If you're a good parent and you've instilled good values into your kids, I promise you a book isn't going to completely transform them into someone else. If after reading Annie on My Mind your child tells you that she is a lesbian, then she was a lesbian before she read it. The book just helped her cope with it. Maybe you should read it too. Just my opinion.
So here's the two books I read this week specifically for Banned Book Week:
Annie On My Mind
by Nancy Garden
From
Goodreads:
Liza never knew that falling in love could be so wonderful . . . and so confusing.
"'Liza,' Mom said, looking into my eyes, 'I want you to tell me the truth, not because I want to pry, but because I have to know. This could get very unpleasant . . . Now--have you and Annie--done any more than the usual experimenting . . . '
'No, Mom,' I said, trying to look back at her calmly. I'm not proud of it, I make no excuses--I lied to her."
This groundbreaking book is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings. This book is so truthful and honest, it has been banned from many school libraries and even publicly burned in Kansas City.
My Thoughts: Annie On My Mind was written in the early 80's, but other than certain plot lines (what happens to the lesbian teachers), I felt the book was still pretty relevant. It's a book about first love, and yes, it is a love between two girls. There's nothing salacious about the romance between Annie and Liza. The two girls meet, form an instant connection, and slowly fall in love. Well, maybe not that slowly because they are teenagers after all. Annie and Liza's relationship is actually pretty sweet- they each make the other better, shine where the other dims a bit, and help each other grow. My copy of the book actually had an interview with the author, Nancy Garden. She wrote the book because as a gay teen growing up in the 1950's there wasn't a whole lot of books that featured gay characters- and the one's that existed usually ended up with the gay character dying. She wanted to write a story that would have a happy ending, and
Annie On My Mind accomplishes that. And honestly, compared with most YA today it's about as controversial as gluten free cookies. Both Liza and Annie are young women you'd be proud to call daughter or friend. Wait, is that why it's challenged so often? Would it be more acceptable if Liza was crazy and Annie was a stripper, or if they were deviants of some sort? *eye roll* Read this book, piss off the book banners!
And Tango Makes Three
In the zoo there are all kinds of animal families. But Tango's family is not like any of the others. This illustrated children's book fictionalizes the true story of two male penguins who became partners and raised a penguin chick in the Central Park Zoo.
My Thoughts: Despite the fact that it's a picture book for young readers, And Tango Makes Three is a true story, based on real penguins. It's cute, it's harmless, it's about penguins for crying out loud! This should be even less of a challenged book, because the intended reading age targets of this book aren't exactly buying picture books with their disposable income on their own, or even selecting their own books to take out from the library. Don't want your kid to read about gay penguins? Don't check it out from the library, don't buy it for them, but please, leave it on the shelves for children who do want to read it, let their parents make the choice. And me, since I checked And Tango Makes Three out from the library yesterday. I appreciate it, book banners, that you're concerned for me reading about gay penguins, but as stated before, it hasn't really changed me. Not even a single craving for fish, although I wouldn't mind a cute widdle baby penguin. And Tango Makes Three is simply about the different types of families that there are, things that children see every day. I think it's a great book to read and discuss with your child. The book is not trying to force gay penguin sex on young impressionable minds (which any kind of penguin sex, gay or straight, would probably be too much for), but rather point out that not every child, or penguin, comes from a home with one mommy and one daddy. I think that's something today's kids already have figured out.
Overall I enjoyed by Banned Book Reads. Although neither of them qualified as Midnight Reads, both were enjoyable. Both books require the reader to be willing to open their minds a bit, which of course book banners hate. So what did you read this week? What do you plan on reading? I have The Perks of Being a Wall Flower on hold at the library, so don't think my adventures with dangerous, challenged books has come to an end, it hasn't. As long as there is ignorance and fear of the written word, I will strive to read the books that cause that panic to rise in the small, dark, bitter hearts of the book banners. Read on, because as The Reading Rainbow points out, you can go anywhere in a book, do anything. LeVar Burton never said anything about books making you into a different person.
