Academic Librarian Bans Book!!

This was great!
Check out this post from the blog at College and Research Library News.  Author Scott R. DiMarco tells the story of "Why I Banned a Book."  I shan't say anymore 'cause I'm sure you hate spoilers as much as I do. 

Banned books?

I have thought, of late, that the librarians' annual nod to banned books and the evils of censorship gets us nowhere.  Who really pays attention when we celebrate Banned Books Week?  Does anyone notice?  When was the last time a book was truly banned in the United States?  Possibly1921 when James Joyces' Ulysses was put on trial and banned for being obscene.
We librarians ban books from our libraries every day.  We call it selection, deselection, weeding, and collection development.  But the book isn't banned is it?  Community members still have access.  The publisher is still publishing, Amazon is still selling, even the library in the next township may have a copy of the offending item on its shelves. 
The banned and challenged debate comes in to play when a community member questions our professional opinion over what we choose to include or exclude from our collection.  Often the community member is acting from a narrowly proscribed viewpoint that doesn't reflect the community at large.  We did not pull Harry Potter from our shelves, The Higher Power of Lucky can still be found, even 50 Shades of Grey found a home at the library.  Frankly, the debate where I work was that some of the librarians didn't want to give 50 Shades shelf space, while we had over 100 patron placed holds from our library patrons in the county-wide catalog.
In reality, only a country can ban a book and attempt to prevent it from circulating among its citizens.  In the Information Age this is becoming an Herculean task.  The real debate for librarians today is access.  Our community members demand access to the items that they want to read.  Thus we have ongoing conversations with publishers over equitable access to electronic books for our patrons.  We use our skill and experience to use library funds wisely as we select materials to stock our shelves.  And we occasionally purchase a book with lousy reviews because patron demand requires it.

Is there a problem with YA Literature?

I have read some really good YA books.  But I am not in love with the current trend in "realistic" problems in YA lit.  To me they're not realistic, they're sensationalized.  I have teens, so I don't think I'm completely naive or out of  touch when I say that most teens do not drink alcohol, most do not use drugs, most do not party to excess, most are not sexually active, certainly most are not promiscuously sleeping their way through the attendance roster of their school, most are not being abused by a parent or family member, most are not involved in crimes that would make the headlines of the evening news.  However, judging from the titles that frequently fill the bookstore and library shelves these are the experiences that commonly fill the minds of young adult readers.

Why? Why this focus on the shocking and sordid? 

I found out this week that I am not the only one to ask this question.  In The Case for Good Taste in Children's Books, author and children's book reviewer, Meghan Cox Gurdon presents the argument that children's book have become too dark, too filled with the abnormal and sordid and this is having an adverse affect on children's hearts and minds.  She writes:

This is why good taste matters so much when it comes to books for children and young adults. Books tell children what to expect, what life is, what culture is, how we are expected to behave—what the spectrum is. Books don’t just cater to tastes. They form tastes. They create norms—and as the examples above show, the norms young people take away are not necessarily the norms adults intend. This is why I am skeptical of the social utility of so-called “problem novels”—books that have a troubled main character, such as a girl with a father who started raping her when she was a toddler and anonymously provides her with knives when she is a teenager hoping that she will cut herself to death. (This scenario is from Cheryl Rainfield’s 2010 Young Adult novel, Scars, which School Library Journal hailed as “one heck of a good book.”) The argument in favor of such books is that they validate the real and terrible experiences of teenagers who have been abused, addicted, or raped—among other things. The problem is that the very act of detailing these pathologies, not just in one book but in many, normalizes them. And teenagers are all about identifying norms and adhering to them.

Instead of writing to merely "validate the real and terrible experiences" some children face wouldn't it be better to offer literature that provided glimpses of a better world, where happy and hopeful experiences are possible?  Granted some children have had horrible, scaring tragedies in their lives, but as Gurdon wrote, "does it really serve them to give them more torment and sulphur in the stories they read?" I think authors and publishers are doing young adults a disservice with this steady diet of blood, trauma, and dysfunction. 

I found Gurdon's article in Imprimis, it was adapted from a speech she gave at Hillsdale College.  She was invited to speak at Hillsdale in part because of an article she wrote for the Wall Street Journal entitled, "Darkness too Visible."   The article caused a small firestorm in literary circles.

The question is, I suppose, do we have a right to limit what our teens read?  We make them eat veggies instead of a diet of candy and soda.  We limit their bedtimes, their TV time, and the amount of time they spend on the Internet.  We try to control the level of violence in the movies they watch and the video games they play.  So why shouldn't there be limits to what is appropriate in YA literature?  Why is it the wild west out there with parents having to preview every book?  Some parents just don't know what's out there.  They remember the "shocking" books of Judy Blume and think  that's what their teens are reading.  If only.

Librarians, of course, are caught in the middle.  As parents we might not love the content of the books on our shelves.  As librarians we've been trained to believe that the "freedom to read" is paramount.We give the customers what they want, that's what we do.  I'm glad I work in the Adult Department and not YA, because I am saddened by the offerings we deliver up to our youth.  And grateful that as a parent I have the knowledge and expertise to help guide my teens out of the darkness toward more uplifting fare. 

50 Shades ...

     The 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon continues, though I'm now only reserving it for patrons once or twice a week instead of several times a day.  What surprises me is not that people like the books or want to read them, but rather that people are still asking for the books and saying that they don't really know what it's about.  They tell me "everyone is reading it" or "my friend said I should read it" the wildest was yesterday when a woman came to the desk and wanted to reserve 50 Shades Darker, she commented that she thought 50 Shades of Grey was "disgusting" (her word, not mine), but she was going to read the second one in hopes that it got better.  I wonder if, perhaps, they're embarrassed and concerned about being judged, that stinks. Read what you want, to heck with what anyone else thinks.
     There was a great post about the 50 Shades controversy at the RA for All blog.  You can read it here.  I look at it this way, I'm a librarian.  My job is to supply the library with the materials the community needs and wants.  When selecting materials I try to make rational judgments based on book reviews, best seller lists, patron requests and my own training and experience.  I try not to make judgments about what people do or do not choose to read, watch, or listen to based on my personal opinions.  Afterall, not everyone is keen on the things I like either.
     Meanwhile, a tempest started brewing when one of the librarians suggested creating a bibliography of readalikes.  Another librarian suggested that it was one thing to have erotica on the shelves and another thing entirely to promote it.  Ultimately, a compromise was reached and a bookmark with a list of suggested authors (as opposed to specific titles and book cover images) was agreed upon.  Peace is wonderful.