First published through my Water’s Edge Press newsletter
Last week was Banned Books Week, an annual event coordinated by the American Library Association. When I taught high school English, I was eager to engage my students. We made displays, discussed the issues, and I hope, understood in the end how lucky we were to be in a school that allowed academic freedom.
Stephen King recently posted on X: “Hey, kids! It’s your old buddy Steve King telling you that if they ban a book in your school, haul your ass to the nearest bookstore or library ASAP and find out what they don’t want you to read.”
Because yes! Of course!
I don’t understand people who think it’s their privilege to tell someone else what they should or should not read. As teachers, when we selected “whole-class” texts, we were mindful of the content, the age of our readers, and a whole host of things, such as the language level, themes, and overall general relatability. If a parent objected, we showed them a list of alternates. Rarely did parents object. But this was years ago. I have heard the situation is worse now.
As for what students read independently, I always encouraged high-interest books. I may not have chosen a Stephen King novel for myself, because I wasn’t that interested in the genre, but many of my students were really into horror, fantasy, or dystopia. Why would I dissuade them from any book they took from the library’s shelves? I wanted students to enjoy reading, which is a darn hard thing to enable.
I wonder if parents or community groups who succeed in a book ban understand that their ban may just drive students to follow Stephen King’s advice? I know most teenagers, and when you tell them they “can’t” do something, are going to prove that they can.
Book bans are about control. And they’re ridiculous because books can’t really be banned. They can only be removed from certain school libraries, which makes those schools even poorer, even less able to teach, even less democratic. But luckily, public libraries are beyond the reach of those who want to tell us what we cannot read.
So, thank you all, for being a community of readers. If you would like, just for fun, to participate in an informal poll of the Water’s Edge Press community about which banned books we’ve read, click here. The Google form does not include all banned books (it would, unfortunately be a long, long list), but only a sampling. As you vote, you’ll see what others have read.
And as always, Water’s Edge Press is committed to supporting the literary arts and the literary artists who make art.