Please don't ask why, at 1:30am, I am 1. Awake and 2. Reading lists of banned books, but I am.

Books get banned from schools because they "promote" something (sex, violence, drugs, drinking, profanity, homosexuality, murder, suicide, rape, racism, withcraft, the occult, political dissent, evolution, disobedience, religion contrary to the predominant religion of the area, etc.) that some parent/group of parents doesn't wan their precious child to read. As if keeping it away from them in literary form is going to make it go away in real life.

And this goes back to what I was saying last post about Disney movies: kids are not stupid. Let me say that again: kids are not stupid. It's ok to challenge them with big words and concepts. They're going to learn this stuff, and probably sooner than you expect. You can't shelter your child from everything, forever. To a certain extent, yes. I'm not advocating letting 3rd graders read 1984 or anything (though I doubt they'd understand it. I read it in 12th grade and didn't fully understand it. Mostly because of what I know about Russian history and politics. Which is nothing.) but some of the things that have been banned are just ridiculous. They were on the case of Shel Silverstein and James and the Giant Peach. Come on. It's ludicrous.

Anyways, my point at the end of this rambling is that when they present me with a list of books that have been banned, I want to read every single one of them. Both to defy the stupid people, and to find out what makes them so bad. Maybe it's just me, but I doubt it. I bet that feeling happens a lot. And it's ironic and makes me happy.




P.S. Where were these people when I was in middle and high school? The Outsiders, Flowers for Algernon, Animal Farm, Great Expectations, Romeo and Juliet, The Iliad, the Odyssey, Lord of the Flies, Antigone, Julius Ceasar, A Farewell to Arms, A  Tale of Two Cities, A Separate Peace, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, The Great Gatsby, Othello, Macbeth, The Canterbury Tales, Brave New World, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Their Eyes Were Watching God, every single one of those books/plays has at least on of the objectionable things in it. Most have several. (And couldn't someone PLEASE object to Great Expectations so we can stop forcing kids to suffer through that book?) If I hadn't read any of them, I'd never have had an English class. Oh no, I tell a lie. I could still have read Pride and Prejudice. Oh joy.