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Special Feature
WHAT OUR TEENS READ: WHO SHOULD DECIDE?
by Kelly Milner Halls
Special to the Denver Post
(September 26, 2004)
Banned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Association and the American Booksellers Association, runs from September 25 to October 2 in 2004, and shines a light on a growing controversy in America – what should our young people read, and who should decide?
Conservative groups like Colorado-based Focus on the Family stand on what they consider to be high moral ground and believe groups like the American Library Association undermine parental preferences.
“…every year this organization attempts to intimidate and silence any parent, teacher or librarian who expresses concern about the age-appropriateness of sexually explicit or violent material for schoolchildren,” according to Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy at Focus on the Family in a September 23, 2003 press release, “even the most hard-core pornography.”
ALA Intellectual Freedom spokesperson Pat Scales fervently disagrees. She admits parents have the right to steward their young readers, but not the whole community. “What one person finds offensive won’t be offensive to another,” she says. “Our job as public librarians is to have a balanced collection of materials so people can make their own personal choices.”
Does the ALA set library policy as Minnery suggests? Absolutely not, according to Bonnie F. McClune of the Colorado State Library. “Our libraries are independent.” And statistics gathered by the Colorado Library Association also dispute the claim that books are never banned.
During the 2003/2004 fiscal year, thirty-two books were challenged in writing by library patrons across the state who found them inappropriate for a variety of reasons. Of those 32 titles, three were banned from circulation – pulled from library shelves altogether. Five more were restricted – require parental permission to be checked out by minors. Four books were moved to more age appropriate library sections, four of the challenges were withdrawn, and nine book titles remained unchanged after careful, committee review.
Twelve books were officially censored to some degree in Colorado in 2003/2004. Seven more are in library limbo, their fate’s undecided, according to the CLA. But several prominent Colorado librarians insist the figure is extremely misleading, because most challenges are undisclosed.
“During my 14-year career, I’ve dealt with more than 200 challenges,” says Douglas Public Library District director Jamie LaRue. “I’ve had 13 so far this year.” LaRue’s Castle Rock district is less than 15 miles from the Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado Springs.
CLA Intellectual Freedom Committee member and school librarian Gene Hainer confirms, most challenges are unreported. “Look at it this way,” he says. “There are more than 1,700 schools and 178 school districts in Colorado. But only about 20 people are responsible for filing time consuming challenge. I’d say 95% are resolved without public intervention or written reports.”
Why so little documentation? According to Hainer, it’s often a matter of job security. “Years ago, there was a book series called The Stupids,” he recalls. “My principal at the time told me to get it off the shelves. No discussion. Just do it.” Hainer opposed the removal, but was forced to comply. “If you have a choice between your paycheck and doing what’s right,” he said, “it can be a tough choice.”
But even if the CLA modest stats are on target, the impact of each challenge can be far reaching. Consider the 2003 challenge of Whale Talk, a novel by Chris Crutcher in Fowlerville, Michigan.
The award winning story of a smart but tough multiracial senior determined to help a band of misfit swimmers earn letter jackets was selected by Fowlerville High School staff members as the One Book, One School reading selection. The book dealt with bullying, racism and domestic abuse – topics both students and administrators considered worth discussing.
More than six-hundred-and-fifty 10th, 11th and 12th graders carried home permission slips to read the realistic work of fiction. Only five parents, including Olivia Verfaillie, denied their teens permission to read Whale Talk, and they were immediately assigned a less controversial book.
Verfaillie was not appeased. She filed a written challenge against the use of the book as curriculum and demanded the school board take action. “Whale Talk is a vile, un-Godly, profane novel,” she said in the Detroit News. “My heart cries for the children who have read this book because…what we have subjected ourselves to stays within us and Satan can use that to our detriment…”
Fowlerville teens disagreed. “I can speak on behalf of 99% of the students at Fowlerville High when I say that Whale Talk was truly amazing and inspirational,” wrote one anonymous Senior on Crutcher’s website. “It is unfair…for one parent to try and dictate to other parents what their children can or cannot read.”
Crutcher, a family therapist in Washington State, offered a different argument. “You do not, as an adult, have to like the story or agree with its messages to have a valuable conversation with your children. I think we put ourselves in a tough position as adults when we refuse to hear our kids' stories in their native tongue.”
Verfaillie won her battle to restrict the rights of so many others. And yet, when Crutcher visited the school to thank his defenders after the swirl of publicity made the tone of his work crystal clear, again, only six students were forced to sit out the assembly due to parental objections.
Civil rights activist, educator and author Julius Lester faced similar confrontations because of his book When Dad Killed Mom in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Offended by realistic use of language and violence in the story of domestic abuse, a seven member committee voted 5 to 2 to ban the book completely in 2002, based on the challenge of one Jackson Hole Middle School parent.
“Given how serious domestic abuse is in this country, given how many children have been killed along with their mothers by their fathers, given how many children have been orphaned by their fathers killing their mothers,” Lester says, “The novel attempts to deal with a serious issue from the point of view of children who carry lifelong scars of domestic abuse. To focus on language and sexuality in the book is stick one's head in the sand.”
Tom Minnery, who also authored the book, Why You Can’t Stay Silent: A Biblical Mandate to Shape Our Culture (Tyndale, $18.00) may have applauded both victories, though he did not return our calls. In the same 2003 Focus on the Family press release he said, “We encourage parents to reject the intimidation tactics of the ALA and to exercise their constitutionally protected rights.”
Internet watchdog ParentsAware.com seeks a more moderate solution, according to its anonymous editorial director. “We’re not a book review,” she says. “We’re a screening tool to help parents and grandparents raising children with traditional Christian values to avoid books with excessive violence, sexuality, homosexuality, and language.”
Screening may mean the review of jacket copy only, as was true for The Garden by Elsie V. Aidinoff, but the ParentsAware.com spokesperson makes no apology. “When I write something about a book based on what’s on the book jacket, it's like seeing a movie preview. It only takes a few moments to know what the movie's about and whether or not I want to see it.”
Aidinoff admits her book is controversial “It is a novel about the Garden of Eden seen through the eyes of Eve, with the Serpent as the hero,” she says. But she wonders why adults have so little faith in a new generation. “Do we not have enough confidence in our children to allow them to read serious, thoughtful books, even though those books may not hue to the conventional line? Youngsters are exposed to sex and violence nearly everywhere they turn: in video games, television, movies. And yet a phalanx of censors stands ready to defend young readers against—what? Ideas? Thinking? Making up their own minds?”
The gap between opposing camps may seem expansive. But Douglas Public Library District director Jamie LaRue, who has lost only one of the 200 challenges he’s fielded, believes bridging ideologies is often a matter of thoughtful communication, not battle lines.
“These people are not our enemies,” LaRue says. “They are using the library. They are encouraging their children to use the library. They are paying attention to what their kids read. They are even going out of their way to talk to a public institution.”
He adopts a candid approach when a parent questions his collection. “I often ask the parents if their children will grow up to live in a real and sometimes dangerous world,” he says. “Then I ask, ‘Where do you want your child to encounter this subject for the first time – at home while he can still talk to you, or out on the street?”
By addressing the core concern, which he insists is protecting the people they love, LaRue attains the impossible – compromise.
Precisely, says author Julius Lester. “That’s what democracy is about -- choice. But the current political climate is one in which too many people seem to want to impose their beliefs in books, movies, television, and health (abortion, stem cell research) on others. And that’s not what a democracy is about.”
Freedom isn’t freedom, if we’re not free to disagree. | 
