book banning is alive and well

[piranha]

the ALA has released its list of "10 most challenged books in 2004" -- those books for which people offended by their contents have formally demanded that they be removed from a school or public library.

four of the 10 books on the list were cited for homosexual themes -- the highest number in a decade, *sigh*. what's most amazing to me is the fact that books which present racism as a pervasive problem are challenged for racism.

via jenett.

i think i'll give myself a new project. i'll buy and read a book a month from the list of 100 most challenged books of 1990-2000, and then release it via bookcrossing.

Comments

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

I'll be interested to discover if you ever have misgivings about releasing some books along the way. My exposure to Captain Underpants and the Goosebumps series would lead me to support their not being in school libraries, which I think should champion some minimal threshhold of literary achievement.

"Not every book is right for every person, but providing a wide range of reading choices is vital for learning, exploration and imagination. The abilities to read, speak, think and express ourselves freely are core American values." That's a fine sentiment, but when you use it to say "We're just going to put out everything with an ISBN code and let market forces decide what gets read," you've failed in your duty as an educator.

[jenett]

The challenges they report are not just from school libraries, but public ones too. (I don't think we have an updated version: we should order one for next year, but one of the publications the ALA puts out has specifics on where the challenges came from)

As far as 'literary quality'... it depends.

We get to bypass a lot of those books because our kids are pretty high achieving to start with. But most librarians I know of would rather kids read (and have stuff they enjoy reading) and go from there. It's a lot easier to push the good books on kids who are already reading.

Whether a particular book is a sensible purchase for a particular library depends on a lot of factors. What's that library's user population like? Are there specific needs in the community? Will buying a particular kind of book help encourage reading in a given part of the community?

And, the big question... if you buy *this* book, is it seriously going to impact buying other types of books that might be more necessary for the community? (i.e. a lot of school libraries on budget crunches don't buy much fiction, because it's not necessary for that library's mission. On the other hand, if you've got some space in the budget, fiction is a really good way to encourage kids to use the library more than briefly for projects.)

Public libraries have different needs than school libraries. A school in a more 'sheltered' suburban environment has different needs than a school in an urban center. A private school with high pressure on most students (like where I work) has different needs than a school where there's more variety.

I'm reading several library fiction lists (though they're general fiction and young adult focused, not children's/juvenile), but the general take of most librarians is you've got to strike a balance, and sometimes that's easier than others.

If kids come into the library and say "Do you have X?" and the librarian says "X really isn't very well written, try Y", that tends to turn kids away.

If you say "Yes, we have X" and then follows it up with "Y'know, if you like X, you might also like Y: it's got [specific things in common with X, like a similar setting or type of character, or tone]" then you often get further. But if you just say "No, we don't have X", a number of kids will go away and not come back.

Incidentally, the "Only carry quality" has a long history in the library profession: for a long time, a number of libraries around 1900 wouldn't carry *fiction*, except for the classics, because they thought libraries should be morally uplifting and improving.

Then, they discovered that if you don't carry the stuff people want to read (even if you think it's poorly written) they don't come to the library in the first place, and you can't get the better written/plotted/etc. stuff in their hands.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

I guess this is why the Lord didn't want me to be a librarian. I'd smile say "Huh, X doesn't seem to be on the shelves, why not take Y for now and check back in a week," when I know full well that X won't be on the shelves then either as it's buried under the parking lot. That and I've found enough low-paying thankless jobs that only require a Bachelor's degree.

I guess this data really does leave me hungry for actually useful information. Heck, if someone is complaining about "Of Mice and Men" being in her library, that's a GOOD thing -- I want to know about the places that DON'T have it on the shelves because of all of the ickiness.

releasing books

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

no, i don't have misgivings about releasing any books. now, of course this is informed by me generally not reading books i consider total crap (such as, oh, the "gor" novels). but even if i did, i wouldn't feel bad about leaving them for others to find. i tend to think that reading anything isn't a bad thing because it might lead to reading something better next time. and even if not, do i really want to make myself the judge of what random people out there choose to read? since i don't want some other random person to decide this for me, i'll not do it for them. and if i wanted to, just exactly how would i decide objectively? i mean, it's really easy to decide for myself what i like and don't like, and whether it has merit, and of what that merit consists. it's already harder to do for people i know well. it'd be impossible to decide for a stranger.

if i were an educator, i'd endeavour to introduce worthwhile books to children, but i'd not restrict their access to books of which i don't approve. i would instead try and teach them to decide for themselves what's good and what's crap. as regards school libraries, i don't actually have any first-hand knowledge of how they decide what books to buy, but i doubt it's purely market forces. maybe jenett can tell us how her library does it.

Re: releasing books

[eagle]

I similarly sometimes have a hard time figuring out what I think about this when it comes to books that are simply porn.

Take, for example, the Anne Rice Sleeping Beauty series (#53 on this list). Having been curious about notorious books that have upset a lot of people, and not being opposed to a bit of porn, I have read (well, started) both that series and a few of the Gor novels, and the Sleeping Beauty novels are even more poorly written than Gor. That's saying a lot. Gor can occasionally achieve this sort of bizarre self-parody that makes them so bad they're funny; the Sleeping Beauty novels are just bad -- tedious, boring, and pretty much without redeeming value for anything other than porn. (Gor, at its best, can achieve this sort of pulp Conan feel that isn't actually half-bad for the genre, although that feel is lost under the porn in any of the books beyond the first couple.)

Both of those series are primarily collections of not-well-supported fetish explorations that are erotic if they happen to turn your personal crank and rather boring if not. It's sort of the shotgun erotica approach (although Sleeping Beauty is for spanking fetishes almost exclusively). I don't have any problems with the books existing; most porn is like that, and it's very rare to find porn that also has real literary merit as a story judged by conventional criteria. But as fodder for a public library? Eh. It's a little like having the library carry a collection of Hustler. I certainly see a place for that in some libraries -- if nothing else, there should be libraries of porn for academic study purposes. But I don't think it would be a good idea for most public libraries to expend limited resources on porn of this sort, particularly given the resources they'd then have to expend to deal with complaints, informing parents that the books are not for children, etc.

I doubt that sort of discretion would qualify as banning, so as far as that goes, I still don't think the books should be banned. But I also don't think that a public library is falling down on its job by not carrying books of that sort, as opposed to seeking out the small amount of porn that does have strong literary value and attempts a real story. Or at least porn that has significant influence on the genre (The Story of O, for instance).

Re: releasing books

[eagle]

Bleh, my last reply wasn't horribly clear and probably wasn't in response to the right comment. By "this" I mean the general topic of banned books and presence of books in libraries, and by "similarly" I meant to king_tirian's comments. Hopefully that makes it more obvious what train of thought I was responding to.

[drab-pearl.livejournal.com]

Devistating... Some of these are among the most delightful and/or moving books I have ever read.

The Captain Underpants Series

[novazembla.livejournal.com]

... is hysterical.

http://www.scholastic.com/captainunderpants/namechanger.htm

-- @%<, AKA Gidget Lizardpants.