BBW: Why are books challenged?
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BBW: Why are books challenged?
| Wed, 09-28-2005 - 7:33am |
Books usually are challenged with the best intentions—to protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and information.
According to the The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books, Challenges by Initiator, Institution, Type, and Year, the top three reasons, in order, for challenging material are the material is considered to be “sexually explicit” contain “offensive language,” and be “unsuited to age group.”
ALA American Library Association
Can you think of a situation where you might challenge a book?


I'm pretty much of the opinion that if you don't like a book or you have feelings that it might be offensive, don't pick it up. Parents can take control over what their children read and if you don't want your child reading a book, you can try to put a stop to it. If your child is like me, though, they'll read it anyway. I think that banning a book only makes it more enticing to some people. I know that when a book is banned it piques my interest.
The only time I had issues with a book was in high school when we were told to read the New Testament for class. I didn't think that was fair considering that several people in my class were Conservative or Orthodox Jews. To this day I don't know why it was required reading. The Old Testament, well, that's in most religions, but I felt even that was pushing it. In a public school, I didn't feel that the Bible needed to be included in ANY mandatory reading. JMO, hope I didn't offend anyone with that viewpoint. I have aboslutely no issues with the Bible, I just don't think it should be forced on people.
Sarenna
This is a subject near and dear to my heart as a librarian. There has been a lot of discussion about this issue lately on a listserv that I belong to for people interested in young adult literature. There is a woman in Arkansas, I believe that is currently challenging a large number of books in her school district even after she took her kids out of school to home school them.
Here's another question to throw out there. Do you think parents should always have the last say on what their kids read? Should some books be placed on a shelf and only be taken out by a child with signed parental permission?
I'll add my 2 cents after (if) others have answered.
As the parent of a 6 year old I have never read a book that I would ever forbid my daughter to read. But I do think that books should be age appropriate. As a parent I feel it's up to me to be aware what she's going to be reading in the classroom and be able to read and talk about it with her.
The problem with a shelf of books needing parental permission is- who gets to decide which books go on the shelf. Do you put Judy Blume out of reach because they talk about topics that some people find offensive for children? Do you place religous material there because I don't want my child reading about anything other than my beliefs? Nope, nice idea but not a fan of the parental consent shelf
"As a parent I feel it's up to me to be aware what she's going to be reading in the classroom and be able to read and talk about it with her."
I think this is excellent. That is the approach my mom took with my education and it always worked well for us. My mom read my school books and we talked about them - controvercial topics or not. And wouldn't you know, conversations about books turned into conversations about life in general. We never really had trouble talking about the "big" things like sex, drugs, and alcohol because we were already talking about everything else in the world. These conversations were just a natural progression.
I have mixed feelings about parental permission. First of all, as someone pointed out, who is going to decide which books get put on the parental permission shelf? Is it the librarian, the principal, a committee of parents?
I *do* think that elementary kids sometimes need sheltering but once they get to middle school, the issue becomes more complicated. What if a parent decides that they don't want their child to read anything about about a certain subject such as homosexuality and their child actually thinks he/she might be gay? Isn't it that child's right to be able to read about people like him/herself? Or what if a child is being abused or has a friend that is being abused and the child wants to read a book about abuse, what then?
I think a lot of times when a book gets challenged, people don't take the time to read the whole book and just focus on one passage. I think literature has to be taken as a whole when evaluating the worth of a book.
As a school librarian, I had a parent hang up on me when discussing a book she didn't like that I had put on the summer reading list. Luckily it never got the challange stage as my asst superintendent supported me and diffused the situation.