Book Bannings: They're Not Great

People. I have kept my lips zipped about book banning on these streets, but now I'm going to say some things.

First - I am very conservative about content and kids and always have been. I have clutched my pearls many a time when kids tell me what their parents let them watch on tv and at the movies (Game of Thrones? for middle schoolers?!?! Y'ALL). If it were within my power, I'd make it impossible for teenagers to see the likes of Andrew Tate anywhere on the internet. And also, boy I sure wish I could either make the internet less rated X, or convince more parents of middle schoolers to talk to their kids about what they see online and also just take up their phones at night.

Second - my bona fides. Here's where I'm coming from: I'm a middle school English teacher. I have a degrees from Dartmouth and Middlebury in Literature, and a degree from Harvard in education (language and literacy!). But my biggest qualification is that I am a classroom teacher. Every single week, this year and for many school years, I've sat down and had one-on-one reading conferences with my students on their independent reading. I can't get to the whole grade in one day anymore, but I talk to about ninety, individually, one day a week, every week. I also teach novels to entire classes. I hear a lot about what kids read, what they choose, what they like, and I actively engage them in books that I choose.

I do not, nor have I ever, subscribed to the idea that because something is written out and bound as a book, it's inherently good for kids. That's silly. Like pretty much every teacher I know, I spend a lot time weighing what is age appropriate, what's appropriate generally, and what our students should be steered away from.

Sometimes, it's the plot of different books - sadly, I have now had multiple instances where a parent of a student died mid school year, and so I either don't read (or stop reading, or find a way for an individual kid to be excused from reading) a beloved novel that has a parent's death as a major storyline.

There was a hot minute in YA publishing when suicide was the plot du jour, and that was NOT GREAT. I am still appalled that Thirteen Reasons Why ever got published, I think it's wildly irresponsible that Netflix made a teen tv show based on it, and I picked up the phone and called the parent of any student of mine who ever showed an interest in it. I picked up the phone, because if I had banned it, that would have instantaneously made that book popular. I call home because really it's the parent's call for their kid to read the book or not, but either way the content of the book means that a trusted adult should talk to them about what they're reading. Any story that romanticizes teen suicide is not one that you should hand to your middle schooler and have them read on their own with no discussion.

One of the most mortifying calls home I've ever made was to a single dad to give him a head's up that his daughter had a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey, which he'd never heard of and knew nothing about. "Sir, uh, google it, and I believe what it means is that your daughter has some questions about sex and relationships.".

My first year teaching there was a book on the curriculum that I refused to teach again because the depiction of Native Americans was frankly awful and not something I'd want my students to be influenced by.

Colleen Hoover books stress me out, as did the Twilight series - whenever I have reading conferences about them (always, it's a mom who has bought them, we don't carry Hoover in the library), I listen but I also try and talk to girls about healthy relationships.

Everything that I'm describing here - it's a *fraction* of what our school librarian does. What all school librarians do - listen, listen, listen, to what kids read, pay attention to what is available, and make decisions about books. Certainly I spend a lot of time thinking about what books I'll read with an entire class, versus what I'll carry on my classroom bookshelves but wouldn't read with a whole class, versus what I'd lend to a kid on an individual basis. Developmentally, middle schoolers are all over the place - you've got eleven year olds who are still super into Dog Man books, and fourteen year olds reading narrative poetry.

All of that to say: I am a BIG FAN of parents taking an interest in what their kids read, and I'm very sympathetic to the idea that not every book is appropriate for every student or grade level. There are truly wonderful middle school books that I wouldn't dream of handing to my elementary aged godchildren, and there are very powerful books for high schoolers I wouldn't hand to any of my eighth graders. Doesn't have a thing to do with lexile level - there are plenty of kids that can understand all of the vocabulary but aren't ready to either engage with or be exposed to the content.

And my friends, the thing that is my life's work: it is not easy. A roomful of middle schoolers who announce that they hate books, hate reading, would rather do ANYTHING but read, what's the point of this, why do I force them to do this - that is my bread and butter. I've got exactly one school year to try my damndest to help them find that one author or book or poem that connects with them. To do it, I'm competing with Tik Tok and YouTube and countless other forms of entertainment and it is VERY HARD. It takes a whole team of people - me, our inclusion SPED teacher, our full-time librarian, our full-time dyslexia teacher, to help kids not only have the nuts-and-bolts ability to read the words on the page, but to make those words and those worlds come alive.

I believe in it. This many years into teaching, and I still, all the way to the bottom of my soul, believe in the power of literature to both express what we feel but didn't have the words to articulate, and to move us intellectually and spiritually. When people say cliches about how your education can never be taken from you, I specifically think of how reading expands your interior life in a way nothing else can. Nobody expresses this idea more wonderfully than Rudine Sims Bishop, who gives us the metaphor of windows and mirrors.

It's a joy when a book *lands* with a kid. An absolute joy. I have so many stories from this year, from past years, from a whole career, of kids who absolutely swore they'd never willingly pick up a book become readers who tangle with the ideas on the page, whose imaginations are sparked, who !!!recommend books to younger kids!!! and who find an author that speaks to them.

And sometimes I don't! and they leave and still hate reading, and I tried my best but to be fair sometimes they leave and still hate math.

I have fought and begged for many years for the resources that I need to get those moments. I've asked friends and family on here for donations for books, I've begged and argued with administrators for new class sets. I've gone to the school board and asked and begged and pleaded for a yearly book budget. (SERIOUSLY THOUGH - I STILL THINK ALL ENGLISH TEACHERS SHOULD GET A YEARLY FIFTY BUCKS FOR BOOKS just in case anyone from my district is reading this). I have gone in person to the state capitol and asked and begged and pleaded legislators for the funding we so desperately need.

But here's what I never saw coming: a society wide culture war in which teachers and school librarians are pilloried and state legislatures go for the books.

My word. My word. I don't know if any single post can explain how bewildering and how demoralizing it is. I suppose the only way it can be measured is in the empty seats of people who have not just quit, they've entirely left the profession. And my friends, they have done so by the hundreds and thousands, because this is utterly wild.

I never in a million years could have imagined that the perceived crisis would be that kids just read too much!

Not the actual literacy crisis that I could outline for you, or anyone who has been in a classroom for any amount of time. But a made up crisis, as though the actual ones we face are just going to fade away in a mirage.

My friends, there are so, so, so, many things that I worry about when it comes to books and kids. The paragraphs above are just the tiniest sprinkling. But the conversations surrounding the book banning rhetoric are like dispatches from an alternate reality.

I had a very upset woman I had never met or talked to before approach me at a school board meeting and breathlessly offer to show me the screenshots of pornography on her phone, offer to answer any questions I had about YA lit, and then become very offended when I wanted neither.

How do I even articulate how deeply weird that sort of behavior and conversation is?

Let me say some things as gently as possible. I know everybody feels like an expert at schools because we all attended schools. And I know that in particular, people feel like they either are experts or don't need expertise when it comes to English because they can understand a YA book but might struggle with their kid's math homework.

But here is the thing that needs the gentle telling: my pals, unless you are actively in a classroom, many of you haven't read a YA book since you were a kid, and although you loved Harry Potter and Hunger Games and so forth, that was a long time ago. Nostalgia goggles distort your perceptions of things, and nostalgia generally tends for us to perceive our own childhood experiences as wholesome and modern things as not as wholesome.

The thing is - a lot of the hysteria has been about the prominence of LGBT and Black characters. Y'all. Turn on Netflix, and go to the movie theatre, look at Tik Tok and the voting ballot. Time marched on since we were all kids. LGBT people, Black people, Latinos - we used to not figure prominently in public life. Certainly I have no memory of books or movies or tv shows about nerdy, Shakespeare loving Latinas who spent a lot of time with family in Mexico from when I was a kid. But all of that exists now. I can turn on Netflix and see nerdy latina teens and goth latina teens and all kinds of latina teens. LGBT characters have been in movies and tv shows for quite a bit of time now, and I'm not entirely sure why people are shocked that they are also in books? But I assure you that gay people don't sprout fully formed from the head of Zeus, they are little kids and tweens and teens. And when they are tweens, they do like an occasional storyline where a kid likes another kid but is not sure if the other kid likes them back and then possibly they kiss.

I mean. I don't know what to tell you. I absolutely would not let kids read the book version of Euphoria, but all on their own, they're going to look for book versions of the equivalent of, say, Glee.

As for books with Black main characters and other non-white characters - I?? don't even know?? how to explain?? that people exist??? I mean I am still picking my jaw up off the floor that Jerry Craft's book New Kid was banned in a town in Texas. People - that is a graphic novel where most of the plot is about a middle schooler going to a private school instead of a public school and being the "new kid". People want him to play basketball but he just wants to make art. That's it. That's the plot. There's quite a bit for any middle schoolers to relate to here - whether or not they're Black, it's very awkward to go to a new school and not know anyone!! In other words, it's great for Black students to see themselves in a book, but that book is wildly popular with all middle schoolers because it's very relatable and age - appropriate.

And I know, I know I know I know I know, everyone wants kids to like the books that *they* liked when they were kids. I know. People want kids to read classics.

My friends, I am not against it!! I am the most old book loving person in the entire universe and I have made an entire career out of bamboozling kids into reading not just old but centuries old texts with me. I *know*.

But, and here's the other harsh truth I am going to impart to you as gently as I can: they don't want to read your favorite book from when you were a kid. They want to read new books.

Pals, my absolute favorite book when I was the age of the kids that I teach was Anne of Green Gables. Shaped my life. I loved it so much that I made my parents drive me to Prince Edward Island in Canada. Drive there *from Texas*. And of all the however many (1400?1500?) kids that I have taught, you know how many I have gotten to successfully read that book as a free choice?

Two.

You know how many have liked it?

One.

Making new books unavailable to kids (and that is mostly what we're talking about) while only letting them read older books is akin to only letting them watch tv shows from the 80s and 90s, but no Marvel.

I'm not saying that all parents universally should read all new books to keep up-to-date - I love my job, but I don't think y'all have the stomach to hear the political intrigues and interior lives of dragons (hi, Wings of Fire) and also hours and hours of Diary of a Wimpy Kid plots. My point is that this is why I exist and school librarians exist. Literally, this is our profession. Internally, we have many, many, arguments about canon and curriculum, but you can immediately tell who is actively in a classroom and who is not by the level of cluelessness people have on what kids will read and engage with. It's stunning to me that all of that collective experience and expertise is not only ignored but vilified by state legislators across the country.
So, look:

English teachers do, in fact, know what they're doing, as do librarians. Calling either to express a concern or guiding your own kid away from reading material that you feel is wrong for them is understandable and good parenting. I still find it comical that for all the rhetoric that makes the current moment look like some kind of parent vs. teacher thunder dome, I mostly have anecdotes about parents thinking I'm just too prudish.

But for the love of all that is holy: please, please, please, let us do our jobs. We *are* in a literacy crisis. It *is* in fact, pretty hard to win out over all the competing media and win kids over to literature. We need help and support for that - read at home, vote for adequate funding, ask your kids about what they're reading, push for your kid's school to have a full time librarian and as much dyslexia services as possible. Please don't undermine the whole operation by taking the most basic and vital tool we have, which are books. Please don't be taken in by hysterical rhetoric. Take a comprehensive look around your whole media environment - books, movies, tv shows, social media. Consider that the one most likely to be the problematic influence is found on your child's phone, and not on the bookshelf. Consider that making something unavailable to your kid for very valid reasons doesn't mean that that thing should be unavailable to everyone else's kids.

Last thought: friends, "old" doesn't equate with "moral". I read big excerpts from the Odyssey this year for the first time. I loved it, the kids loved it, they asked for more. But they literally refer to it as "those stories about that guy who cheated on his wife". They are great stories but these are not paragons of virtue!!!