As many of you may know, it’s Banned Books Week, a time to reflect on and celebrate the many wonderful books that have been banned or challenged throughout the years.

As an author of books for young adults, the issue of banning and challenging books is of particular concern to me. Parents are naturally protective of their children, and often that instinctive desire to protect includes an impulse to shield teens from literature that touches on controversial issues such as teen sexual activity, drug abuse, homosexuality, racism, and violence, as well as from books that contain vulgar language. The fear I’ve often heard expressed is that by exposing children to these ideas, you increase the chance that they will condone or even participate in the “undesirable activity” being portrayed. (I add the quotation marks, because I don’t include homosexuality in the list of undesirable activities.)

In fact, I believe the opposite is true. I think that when a teen has an opportunity to experience something vicariously through reading about it, he or she no longer needs to seek out that experience in the real world. Several years ago, I attended a workshop with Ellen Hopkins, author of YA novels such as CRANK (which has been banned and challenged) and PERFECT. She shared with us an email she had gotten from a teen girl who said that she had thought about experimenting with drugs, but that after reading CRANK (which is about meth), she realized she didn’t really want to.

Along the same lines, another incredible book which many consider controversial is Laurie Halse Anderson’s WINTERGIRLS, which is about a girl struggling with anorexia. Some people have expressed concern that the book glamorizes the disorder and might make the teens who read it want to emulate the behavior of the main character. I would argue that reading about the character’s harrowing experiences would raise teens’ awareness of the devastating consequences of anorexia and make them less likely to find such behavior appealing.

What do you think? Is exposing teens to literature that deals with controversial topics harmful or helpful? What are some of your favorite banned and/or challenged books?

Tags: banned and challenged books

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.