debmay's Blog

Why would anyone censor children’s books? What type of content would people want to ban? Most of the children’s books that have been challenged are in the Young Adult section. Some of the most commonly challenged children’s books are Harry Potter, The Chocolate War, The Golden Compass, And Tango Makes Three, Huckleberry Finn, and The Color Purple among others. Picture books that have been challenges are books that have gay and lesbian parenting and themes, books about witches and fairies, etc. Chapter books written by Lexington, Kentucky educators, Debbie Dadey and Marcia Thompson Jones, the Bailey School Kids series have been challenged because of the contents in books like Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots and Werewolves Don’t Go to Summer Camp. (Debbie now lives in Furlong, Pennsylvania).

Books that are written to help children cope with alcoholism; drugs, death, divorce, etc. can be challenged. This is the bibliotherapy category. These books are written for a purpose and many children need to know they are not alone with these family problems and they need to see that they have hope for better lives.

While a librarian who selects books for the children’s department will strive to have age appropriate materials and a good mix of quality literature and popular literature, it falls to the parent to determine what suitable material for a child is. What is unacceptable to one person is sought by another and all patrons have the right to find the books they seek.

A collection is developed around the needs, desires and personality of the community who will be using the library with books binge selected to meet the needs of all facets of the community.

I view challenges as one person trying to push his or her notions of what is appropriate material on the rest of the public and I take a dim view of that. If a parent doesn’t like a book, don’t check it out of the library, but it isn’t right to remove it from the shelves when others might want it. I don’t think anyone else has the right to determine what I read and I don’t have the right to determine what another person reads.

Do librarians self censor? Sure, they do and in various ways. I knew a high school librarian once who took a razor blade and cut out all the cuss words in the books. She spent a considerable amount of time doing that. I was appalled. She was scared to death of someone challenging one of her books. Librarians have limited budgets and they cannot buy everything. So, it is easy to avoid the most controversial books since budgets are so limited. This is a way a librarian can censor without anyone knowing it is going on.

In order to be prepared for someone challenging a book, I made sure when I purchased a controversial book for the library that it had been well reviewed in a reviewing journal such as The School Library Journal or the Horn Book. That way, if there were any questions, I could point out that the book had been well reviewed and on that basis, I was justified in adding it to my collection. Also, I worked close to Northern Kentucky University and when they needed books for their children’s literature classes, I had to have a variety of books to meet their needs. While our patrons were mostly conservative and most of our collection suited them, we had to have books to meet the needs of other parents.

ALA.org has kits educators and librarians can get to use during Banned Book Week. This year it will be between September 25 and October 2. The reason I didn’t do a banned book display was since I didn’t have anyone challenging any of the books I had on the shelves, I didn’t want to give them the idea to do so.

I am interested in hearing if you have ever had any books challenged or censored at the school where you teach or where your children go to school and what was done by it. I am also interested in hearing from you if the public library you patronize has had any challenges.

Below are some links where you can read further on banned or censored books.

Annotated bibliography of books with gay and lesbian parenting and themes

http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/educator/library/record/27.html

Frequently challenged and banned books

http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics/reasonsbanned/index.cfm

Banned Book Week

http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm