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Fifty Shades of Censorship, or How We Can Learn to Stop Worrying and Let Kids Read by Rosemary Hathaway
Sometime in mid-July, I got a text from an English teacher friend at a local high school. She’d just heard, via her principal, that a parent had complained about The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien’s brilliant short-story collection based in part on his own experiences fighting in Vietnam.
The book was assigned as summer reading for the student’s upcoming AP language and composition class, and the parent—having looked through it—asked for an alternate text. My friend texted to ask for ideas about what she might suggest. I made several recommendations—Walter Dean Myers’ Fallen Angels among them—but the parent rejected all of our candidates and made her own choice, John Hersey’s Hiroshima.
Given that we’re just coming out of Banned Books Week, I’d like to use my Reading Lives moment to address not the dramatic cases of book challenges, like the ongoing battle over The Miseducation of Cameron Post at Cape Henlopen High School in Delaware, but the quieter and more common challenges posed to young people’s reading choices, often by parents themselves.
In reply to a story about the Cameron Post challenge that I posted to Facebook, a former student of mine commented, “OK, help! Now that my daughter is nine and reading above her grade level, these debates take on a new meaning for me. She has a friend reading lots of teen and YA novels, and while I don’t want to squelch her interests, these books have much more to offer a high schooler than a 4th grader. I always rely on the ‘age appropriate’ reasoning, and don’t know when I’m ready for her to be reading f-bombs, although if she’s a good listener, she certainly heard a few!”
The concern about “age-appropriateness” is legitimate, and is one of the reasons why Lexile measurements can be so misleading: just because a child can read a book doesn’t mean it’s a good choice for them personally. And parents, certainly, are the best equipped to gauge what their child can handle in a book. But it often seems that the concern isn’t so much about a book’s potential to disturb or “corrupt” its reader as it is anxiety about the very private and personal nature of the act of reading itself.
I have long thought, and discussed with students in my YA lit classes, that book challenges are motivated not so much by the specific, offensive content of any given text, but by the privacy of the act of reading itself. Concerned parent sees child deeply engaged in a book, oblivious to the external world (oblivious, in fact, to the parent), and becomes suspicious. What’s in that book that’s so interesting? And why can’t I monitor that experience? The process of reading, and the images and thoughts that reading generates, are largely internal and invisible, and some adults find that completely unnerving.
As a voracious, lifelong reader, I understand that reading can be a powerful, life-changing experience. Parents who are concerned about the potential of books to disturb their children clearly also believe that the act of reading is powerful—but they construct that power negatively, casting the act of reading and books themselves as dangerous and potentially corrupting.
In her now-infamous Wall Street Journal article about “dark” YA books, Meghan Cox Gurdon suggested that such books might not only disturb kids, but that they might also cultivate (gasp!) bad taste in literature. “Entertainment does not merely gratify taste, after all, but creates it,” she says, claiming that it is “a dereliction of duty [for parents] not to make distinctions in every other aspect of a young person’s life between more and less desirable options.”
Let me tell you a story: One summer when I was in middle school, my parents and I went on a long road trip to the east coast. We spent a night at Chautauqua in New York, and before we left the next morning, we browsed around a bookshop and my parents offered to buy me a book for the trip. I chose a book of poems by Rod McKuen. (Hey, it was the late 1970s.)
My mom, an English teacher, objected on the basis of taste: “He’s a terrible poet.” My dad, not wanting to start a long day in a small car with a quarrel, intervened, saying, “Let her buy it. If that’s what she wants to read, let her read it.” Smugly, I carried Mr. McKuen’s book to the cashier.
Of course, my mom was right: the poems were terrible, even though I didn’t recognize that at the time.
And guess what happened as a result of my parents’ “dereliction of duty”? Dear Reader, I grew up to be an English professor.
Clearly, that book ruined me. If only she’d snatched that book from my hands and given me a “more desirable option.” Which I probably would have studiously refused to read. Gurdon clearly has forgotten how unwelcome such lessons in taste are to the average person between the ages of, oh, seven and death.
And what is the magical age at which books cease to be “harmful”? I remember being utterly freaked out by the scene in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure when the title character arrives home to find that his eldest child has hanged himself and his siblings in a closet “because we were too menny.” I was haunted by World War I for weeks after reading All Quiet on the Western Front. And John Irving’s The Cider House Rules repeatedly describes an explicit photo of a donkey that no amount of brain bleach will ever eradicate.
All of these I read when I was in college or grad school. I’ve read other books in the two decades since that have disturbed me, as well as many that have moved me to tears, made me laugh out loud, or inspired me. Don’t good books continue to affect us deeply regardless of our age? Isn’t that why we read in the first place?
Adults who challenge books are more often trying to protect themselves and their ideas about what childhood and adolescence should be than they are trying to protect real children and adolescents.
So, I’ll end with an affirmation (shamelessly paraphrased from Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) that I wish such adults would repeat to themselves when they see a kid engrossed in a book: A child, even the smallest one, is filled with thoughts you can’t know. Instead of balking at such a thought, let’s embrace and encourage the complex, private mystery that is reading.
Rosemary Hathaway is an Associate Professor of English at West Virginia University where she teaches courses in young-adult literature and folklore.
Nerdy Book Club 
Light touch on a heavy subject, which is always enjoyable. Thank you for reminding parents of their responsibility toward what their kids read. And I especially liked your point about no age on a reader being affected by what they read.
Excellent food for thought, thanks. The one thing I ask my kids as they bridge from MG to YA is to “step lightly around the f-bombs.” To which, of course, they roll their eyes.
Great perspective. Thank you.
Our school solved the problem of parents complaining about summer reading requirements when we made summer reading a free-choice assignment. Students chose the books, parents signed off on their choices, and the complaints ended.
I actually feel more comfortable with my teen reading controversial books in class than on her own. The teacher and the class discussion will help put things in context – such as the conditions of soldiers fighting in Vietnam – and the students have a forum to give voice to the things that disturbed them about a book. If teens are in an AP English class, they have probably encountered lots of disturbing things in their own personal reading, so including these sorts of books in a class reading list will give them the tools to deal with these sorts of things when they encounter them in their own reading.
As a pre-teen and teenager, no adult around me read books, so I had free range to read what I desired. At 13, I read the completely inappropriate book, Looking for Mr Goodbar, which was later made into a horrible movie with Diane Kaeton and Richard Gere, I had to sneak into because I was still too young to see it. Did that book make me go to bars and hang out picking up strange men? No, it did not. I believe that as readers, especially young readers, we censor what we read. The pictures we make in our minds are our pictures. I have had discussions with my students about certain books and my concerns about them and they have looked at me quizzically and said, “That happened in the book?” In the case of The Hunger Games, I said I didn’t like the idea of The Hunger Games being made into a movie because I didn’t know how they were going to represent the idea of kids killing kids, and the group I was talking with said that no kid killed another kid. (These children had great comprehension too.) I let it go but it made me aware that we all don’t read the same way. We self-censor.
This is an excellent point. Super interesting about the Hunger Games discussion. A lot of what adults worry about is over kids’ heads, so they don’t even notice it. I reread the Little House series as an adult. I was shocked at how dark they seemed to me. There was depression, violence, starvation, and reckless actions that I totally missed the first time around.
Really? I read those in fifth grade. I may have to also go back and read them again. Dang my “to read” list keeps getting longer. Thanks.
Love this! As an avid reader I have read so many books that have left marks on my heart, regardless of my age. As a parent, I let my kids read whatever they want and have long battled the whole leveling issue. Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had with my children as well as my students have come from questions that arise from reading a book outside their level. My parents were very conservative, but the one place they never put boundaries was on what I read, and I am forever blessed because of it.
I never knew this could be an issue. But then, things are quite different in Germany, I guess.
We hadn’t any summer readings excpet for probably the last year of highschool. But at this point, it weren’t the teachers who decided what we ought to read, but the ministry of education that set up a mandatory canon for the entire Bundesland (regional state).
We never put in question whether or not the books were appropriate for age. We rather critised the canon itself, as it barely let us read anything published after 1914.
I’ve recently had my daughter (who is in 6th grade and almost 12) wander over to the YA section at the public library. She is still going to read her middle grade series faves – Wings of Fire, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, How To Train Your Dragon, etc., but is ready to explore the YA world. I’m not as well read in YA as I am in middle grade (and probably never will be unless I move on to a library with older kids) so I have no choice but to trust her judgment as a reader. We have daily conversations about what she is reading, and have talked about self-censoring (stop reading something if it makes us feel uncomfortable).
What a fantastic post. I am a writer, in part, because no one paid attention to what I was reading. I was a vacuum cleaner of a reader – from The Hobbit and Little Women to Flowers in the Attic and Stephen King. The things I didn’t understand flew right over my head in my quest to eat up the plot. While I would never recommend certain books to younger readers, I don’t think it’s the end of the world if they find their way to them. Kids do have secret lives, that they are entitled to.
I believe a big issue for parents, that I’ve noticed anyway, is this strange unwillingness to accept reality. I’ve had three kids go through middle school and Stephen King is tame in comparison to certain situations that have cropped up. From drugs to sexual situations, kids are getting exposed to far more, far sooner. Let them read. It’s such a safe place for exploration.
I like this idea of “self-censorship.” I’ve discussed it with my teens regarding web sites and music, why not books? Of course, I’m always checking into what they consume and asking questions. Discussion is far better than suppression. Thanks for this new take on the banned books issue.
“Adults who challenge books are more often trying to protect themselves and their ideas about what childhood and adolescence should be than they are trying to protect real children and adolescents.”
Well said, Rosemary, well said. I also like the idea of reading being very private and internal. Many times I think parents forget that they are to equip their children with the skills needed to navigate the world without them and reading is one of the most important components.
I was blessed to have a father who was an avid reader, and never censored what I read. I have passed that on to my two daughters who are both currently middle schoolers. They do have classmates whose parents have gotten books pulled off their classroom and library shelves with no resistance from administrators. It should be interesting this year, as this family now has a child at the high school, and she is on the roster of one of my classes next spring.
When I have a concern about the books my children are reading it is usually because I feel they are not mature enough for the content. I have never banned books, but I have suggested they wait for a year or so before we re-visit it. It’s not just books, I feel there is so much pressure on our children to leave their childhood as early as possible. Films, movies fashion play to their desire to be older and there is so much rich literature and media that doesn’t play to this, I want them to live here for a while. I think YA fiction is fantastic and have no qualms about them reading these books when they are age-appropriate. I think it is great that schools choose books that engage their readers, and agree that it is good to unpack some of these issues in the safety net of the class.
Amen!
Thank you Rosemary, for I appreciate this re-affirmation that ” A child, even the smallest one, is filled with thoughts you can’t know.” We need to always affirm this primary confidence and respect as we enter every conversation; be it between reader and author (text), parent and child, or teacher-librarian and wondering reader looking for what to read. To do less is to diminish us all.
Great post. I don’t think my parents ever censored my reading material, and i didn’t for my own kids. However as an author of a wide age range of books, I sometimes suggest to parents that even though their child loves Nim’s Island, they should wait a couple of years before reading Peeling the Onion. I don’t think it would damage them, but I also can’t imagine they’d get much out of it, and to me that’s a very important criterion for choosing a book. If something’s read too young, it won’t be enjoyed, and you’ll never go back to it. (And yes, I did become a writer despite choosing to love Rod McKuen’s poetry in the 70’s. The book’s still on my shelf, and still takes me back to those times, which must be another layer of any book’s merit.)
As a parent of a 13-year-old, I can relate to this argument. I am always on the lookout for quality boy oriented fiction for my son, and knew he would love the aforementioned “Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” I knew my son would enjoy the wit, humor, and cartoons sprinkled throughout the book, and I wanted him to learn about poverty, racism, and alcoholism accurately depicted in this book. But I hesitated…because the book also repeatedly mentions masturbation.
I asked my husband and friends at what age boys start…experimenting with themselves. If my son hadn’t started, I certainly didn’t want to encourage it! And if by chance he didn’t know what it meant, I wasn’t going to be the person who explained it to him! Unfortunately a good friend burst my bubble when he explained that he bought a Squiggly Wiggly pen in sixth grade that had a vibrating top…
My son loved the book and it opened a wide variety of appropriate topics for conversations between the two of us. I’m so glad I took my friend’s advice and offered this fantastic story to my son!
Very cool, and yes it’s actually a deep subject here!
There is hardly a shortage of good reading at any age group. As a last resort, there is always the bible. Sex, violence and begats aside, it has the odd good passage.
When I was about 14 I picked up a book my mom had just read. I forget the title, but it included a long section about a boy who had been abducted as a pre-teen and had been groomed into being a sex partner for an adult male, something he suffered until he escaped as a young adult.
Boy, was that a weight I was not ready to carry. I had no idea about any of that stuff at that age. If I were going to be introduced to it then, I would have liked the concept to have been broken to me more gently.
That said, I’ve never said no to anything my sons have picked up to read. I’ve tried instead to ask them questions about their reading in hopes that if they’ve picked up something more than they were prepared for, we could talk it out. Hopefully that would blunt the effect.
What a great post! I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on and still do to this day (as long as it interests me lol) and while my parents sometimes read some of those books just to make sure they were alright, they never once told me a book was forbidden. I loved that they let me read, encouraged me to even, and allowed me the freedom to disappear into novels and grow from the things I learned in them. It’s sad to hear that reading is being viewed so negatively, it just doesn’t make sense.
Yes! I was raised likewise and I think I am the better for it!
Very insightful and it will definitely help me with books for my kids.
Loved this post! From a young age, I rebelled against the books that were forced upon me by my school, my parents and relatives for Christmas and Birthdays. I was adamant that the books I read would be my own personal choice. It wasn’t long before my parents gave up on attempting to sensor my book choices, which inevitably lead to the reading of utterly inappropriate books for my age (i.e. 50 Shades of Grey at age 15). I have no regrets though – I read books with hype surrounding them because I’m interested in seeing what it is that lures people into reading them at all. And I can confidently say, reading awful, explicit and down-right dirty books has only helped give me a greater sense of clarity and a better grasp on my own writing. I can guarantee I have not been warped by my past reading experiences in an entirely negative way.
Compellingly thought out. I am lucky to teach in a liberal system where my choice of text is dependant on the class and the point I’m trying to make rather than the supposed morals of parents. My IB class have just finished reading Carter’s ‘The Passion of New Eve’ for example. Did it shock them? Yes. Were they able to articulate why? Yes. Did that allow them to see how they construct taboo and morality? Big yes. Had I have been hamstrung by concern over parental reaction this powerful lesson would have lost.
“Age-appropriateness” is a frightening concept. I think everything should be allowed, with only the caveat that we should be there with them when they’re young, and let them know why what they’re reading is crap, if it is. Some sorts of info being available when the kid doesn’t have the understanding for it may be harmful sometimes – but the opposite mistake, with-holding information that they are ready for – that is always wrong. And they are ready for a lot, if we haven’t been with-holding all along.
A great article with many valid points. From someone who always read far beyond my age, I was lucky to have a mother who only stepped in on occasion (and always with good reason, in hindsight!) But for the most part, encouraged by love of books.
I absolutely loved this post! I was the first in my family to go to grad school, when I grew up I was the first reader in the family too so my parents were caught by surprise and did not know that there were ‘suitable’ books for my age and I came to read everything was at hand, I suppose my parents were just happy their kid seemed to be smart . And I am so grateful for it. I do not know whether I became a better person for that, but I am pretty sure that I became more free and independent thanks to that space that was for me alone. I know it is a hard call today but with hindsight kids often need privacy and some degree of choice to become grown ups.
I was a voracious bookworm as a kid. And my parents had very little what we read. First my mother doesn’t speak English. Father out working in restaurant for 6 children. Got the picture?
Parents worry about dark, controversial books….give me a break! It’s the Internet with porn, facetiming with strangers, sexting, etc.
By the way, I used to be a bit perturbed by reading the true German (translated) fairy tales by the Grimms brothers: they were violent and dark. But got sanitized for children in other countries.
By the way, professionally I have been a librarian (MLS) but have not been a children’s librarian. Just govn’t , engineering and law.
I have in the past received inquiries from acquaintances how to encourage children to read: my response, find books that key into their interests and let them take it from there. Yes, horrible aren’t I? Allowing teens to wander upstairs into the adult section… But their vocabulary will expand as mine did. I didn’t learn English until kindergarten.
This seems perhaps to be operating under an underlying assumption that there are NO books which are inappropriate for anyone. If so, your essay follows. But if we admit that there may be some things (maybe just a few?) which are better left unread by younger people, then their parents are indeed the best qualified to be the gatekeepers of such judgments, since they know and love their own children much better than any teacher could, and further, have specific convictions, plans and hopes for their children. We do best to respect the nature and the wisdom of parenthood. Also, I believe it is naive to deny that there are a few “change agents” out there in YA land, and it behooves parents and teachers to be discerning.
Well done. This was an interesting read and timely.
I think you did a great job at pointing out your perspectives on this. Reading is essential, and if handled by parents that care and are involved, can be the biggest strength they pull from childhood into adulthood….besides love and faith of course 😉
As a 58 y.o. female I see no reason to monitor a child’s reading. My mother, an English teacher, never thought it necessary to restrict my choices. I read “I am curious yellow” with no understanding of what the book was about until years later. That book did not make me want to try any of the kinky acts nor did it turn me into a prude….it did enlighten my understanding about sex…lol
Thought provoking (though it doesn’t take much for me!) I’ve had quite a few encounters with ‘controversial’ books myself. I tried to check out Lolita (by Vladimir Nabakov, which, incidentally, is not banned in my school) from the school library. They told me to pick another book. I picked the Communist Manifesto, and my god, you should have seen there faces.
No longer welcome there anymore. I found Lolita online though. With the Internet, one can read almost anything these days.
Such a good point about how books can be “harmful” no matter the age. I remember being shocked when ‘My Brother Sam is Dead” was banned from my former elementary school shortly after leaving. I loved that book. Meanwhile, some of the stuff I have read in grad school has left me feeling deeply disturbed, most likely for the rest of my life.
As with anything I think its important that children (and young adults especially) are allowed to learn from their own experiences/ experiments mistakes even. The idea of parents attempting to censor their child’s book induced thought process feels uncomfortable.
Very interesting article. It has definitely made me think about how to handle this with my son. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for a wonderful post. As with anything in life, if we make certain things taboo to our kids it becomes even more appealing. My solution to this with my kids is that we both read it and this way we can have a serious conversation about the heavy subjects of life. I think its a beautiful thing for a child to be captivated in the written word. I prefer to have my kids read about drama than to watch it. I rather have them read past an occasional swear word and gain the experience of a book in its entirety. Yes, we should be vigilant but let’s not squash the love of reading and learning. Let’s not dumb down our children just because a certain topic may be difficult to discuss. Lets embrace the moment to communicate with them using such books as the tool.
I struggled with the question of whether L’homme Theroux was appropriate for the YA market during its entire production. I think the gibbeting scene is on par with the multiple hangings you referenced. Looking back to my middle and high school years, I would have loved reading them, but I am of a different personality and mindset than many of the youngsters I see around me. Ultimately, I had to go to my moral compass, my wife.
She agreed some of the violence in the book was intense and graphic, but integral to the story and in line with the time period and setting. Parents’ responsibility is to parent the way they think best. If my novel is not appropriate for their child, their job is to keep the child from my work instead of the other way around.
My parents were the type who didn’t monitor what I read; as such, I was reading Nietzsche and Kant by the 8th grade. Apparently, it made for interesting PTA meetings. Those books damaged me so much I became a history teacher capable of showing how art, music and literature reflect the philosophy of the day – a key skill in teaching upper-level history classes.
I had a magic primary school librarian. She was magic because she taught me three things:
1. Pick up and read whatever you like.
2. If you find it upsetting or offensive, put it down. You don’t have to finish it.
3. If you’re enjoying it but it worries you, come and talk to me about it. Then you can decide if you want to keep reading.
I read a LOT of adult books from about 8 years old. Many of them I started and put down, but have since read as an adult. Some I’ve never gone back to. Others I had long, fascinating conversations with Miss Stubbs about a myriad of topics, and then either continued to read or chose not to continue. I’ve grown up to be a librarian, feminist, activist and very happy person.
Thanks for telling us your story, fuzzy. Great that you are getting better.
This article has made me rethink how I look at books for my kids. Should I regulate them in the same way I do movies? They aren’t the same so I guess I shouldn’t regulate the same.