Thinking about Banned Books

Researching banned books was a fascinating exercise. I never went through the trouble of doing such an investigation, and the results surprised me. I could not believe just how many books were be banned, and how many of them I had read, learned about and enjoyed myself. One of my banned-book findings was The Witches by Roald Dahl, a book I mentioned in an earlier blog post as one of my childhood favorites. In reading about the reasons for which it was challenged or banned, I could not help but be confused and surprised at the thematic material people find to be offensive. The Witches is apparently sexist and scary for kids, something I never quite picked up on as a child reading it over and over. It is interesting that a story that is meant to be quite fantastical and imaginary can be taken so seriously.
In addition, I read Lesléa Newman’s Heather has Two Mommies, a much more overtly controversial book. The themes in this book dealing with homosexual parents go against the social norms in our society and challenge some of the taken-for-granted family structures that regularly appear in our literature. Newman’s goal was to give young children with such families a book to relate to, yet the book received a harsh, averse reaction when finally released. Furthermore, I was even more shocked to find, after sharing in class, that the edition I had used was a more revised and censored one, and that the content of the original book had been so “offensive” that it had to be re-released without some of the themes Newman had initially included. This exercise and discussion, then, led me to ask: how are we ever to effect meaningful change through thoughtful literature if it is not allowed on the shelves?
It seems as though, especially in terms of highly, regarded classic literature, banned books are simply those that tackle important, and usually controversial issues. As became increasingly apparent during our discussion, however, and can be found in the example of The Witches, it seems that books can be banned for anything, as long as somebody has an argument against it. The most important idea I took away from our class discussion was the idea of freedom of choice. Not all children should be forced to read all books with overly sensitive issues, but all children, and all people, should have the freedom to have the choice to read them. After all, books should challenge our thinking and take us to a place we haven’t considered before. For what does a completely agreeable book do for our critical minds anyway? In order to make all children feel comfortable and represented in the classroom, and to encourage them to open their minds, we must re-evaluate how and why we challenge our books.