The new school year has begun or is about to begin across the country. With that come discussions of all kinds, including what books should be available to students in the school libraries. Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick has chosen this point in time to step into the debate with a list of 2,198 “inappropriate books.” Christian activist group Recover America created the list. It contains “dirty, filthy, vulgar books” that, according to Recover America, do not belong in the classrooms or school libraries. The group claims that most of the books are on its list because of age appropriateness. Basically, the list Patrick is championing is someone’s opinion on which books are good for which ages, which this writer thinks is a really bad idea.
There is a key at the top of the list as well as a score of one through five next to each book. Many books had no score. The books with the higher scores, three and above, were deemed not acceptable for middle school. Scores of four and five were deemed not acceptable for high school. Having looked at the books under the letter B on the list, this writer does not agree with Patrick’s stance. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath did not have a score; Beloved by Toni Morrison had a score of three. Black Panther: A World of Wakanda by Roxane Gay also did not have a score. For a list that states the score depends on whether the book can be read or not in certain grades, a lot of the books were without a score.
Another curious addition to the list was Night by Elie Wiesel with a score of three, which means it should not be read by middle school students. Night is a memoir by Wiesel of his time in two Nazi concentration camps during World War II. It was published in 1960 and deals with Wiesel’s memories of the horrors of the Holocaust. Multitudes of schoolchildren have read this book, along with The Diary of Anne Frank, which has been banned and reinstated numerous times. Sixty years after publication, it lands on a list because Restore America stated that it’s too violent for eighth graders, ages 13 - 14. Restore America states clearly that the Holocaust was a horrific event that needs to be taught but not with Night in the 8th Grade. This is one organization’s opinion, and that is where the problems develop. What Restore America finds obscene for the 8th Grade, others, such as this writer, do not. However, my generation was also the generation that saw the Challenger space shuttle explode on national TV, then went to our next class in middle school.
Book banning is one of those “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” situations. Ten-year-olds should not be reading the Kama Sutra; twelve-year-olds should not be reading Slaughterhouse-Five. What should be read and when? Who can answer that question? When this writer was 11, at one school she attended, the class read Where the Red Fern Grows, which has an amazingly graphic and terrible ending. At another school she attended, at the age of 12, her teacher read And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie to the class, and we, as the class, had to figure out who was going to be killed next and why. This was a great exercise in critical thinking. That was a totally different time period, long before social media and the Internet.
Today, far more thought is given to what children should be reading at what grade level. That can be both a good and a bad thing. Reading more advanced books can open a child’s mind to a world they haven’t yet discovered. A book that is too advanced for the child, however, will cause confusion, possibly scaring the child. As a former high school teacher, this author believes that adults don’t realize how resilient children are. They want to protect children from being scared too much by what they read. Have they looked at what those same children see daily on social media? Probably not.
To be honest, the best judges of what a child should or should not read and at what age they should be reading it are the parents. In the 1970s, this writer’s sibling, a 13 or 14-year-old, was reading trashy novels with such lurid titles such as The Bastard and Love and War. Our mother was horrified by my sibling’s taste in books. Our father said, “Why do you care? They’re reading.” There it is — the crux of the argument. As long as children are reading, does it really matter what they’re reading? This author knew plenty of boys when she was a child who liked looking through National Geographic magazine because of the pictures of the naked tribesmen and women. Should National Geographic magazine be banned?
Banning books based on children’s sensitivities is a debate with multiple answers. There is no consensus. Personally, this author believes that when books that are not age-appropriate are moved from one part of a library to another part of the library, that’s not banning; that’s age appropriateness. But book banning is more sensational and will attract far more attention. There’s a reason why libraries have a separate section for children.
Lists, this author finds, depend on the person or group making them. There is no one-size-fits-all book list. Whatever is on one list, another group will argue against. There is no list that will make everyone happy. Lists also have a tendency to be incomplete, despite the best efforts of the list maker. The 2,198 books on the list championed by Lt. Gov. Patrick are supposed to be judged by the score each book has, yet many of the books had no score. What then? Why champion a list that isn’t complete or useful in its current form?
Books are important. Reading is important. For children, reading age-appropriate books is important. What seems to happen is that the adults in charge are more interested in making headlines and being on the news than making sure the books available to children are age-appropriate, no matter the age. They forget that it’s not about them but the children they are supposedly trying to protect. Unfortunately, when the adults choose to have the attention on them, the children lose out.
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