Leafing Through

Banned Book Wednesday

I haven't done a banned book for awhile. I was in the book store the other day and saw "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison and thought of banned book Wednesday.  I first read this book in college, around my second year. I can't remember what class I read it for but it made an impression.  The richness of Morrison's writing transports the reader to the Now of the story.  This tangable Present allows you to empathize with the characters of her books.  The Bluest Eye made the top three banned books of 2006. I don't have much to say about the book because it's such a powerful story. Instead of writing about it I'm going to give you an excerpt.

Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men and sober eyes sing in the lobby of the Greek hotel. Rosemary Villanucci, our next-door friend who lives above her father's cafe, sits in a 1939 Buick eating bread and butter. She rolls down the window to tell my sister Frieda and me that we can't come in. We stare at her, wanting her bread, but more than that wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that curls her chewing mouth. When she comes out of the car we will beat her up, make red marks on her white skin, and she will cry and ask us do we want her to pull her pants down. We will say no. We don't know what we should feel or do if she does, but whenever she asks us, we know she is offering us something precious and that our own pride must be asserted by refusing to accept.

School has started, and Frieda and I get new brown stockings and cod-liver oil. Grown-ups talk in tired, edgy voices about Zick's Coal Company and take us along in the evening to the railroad tracks where we fill burlap sacks with the tiny pieces of coal lying about. Later we walk home, glancing back to see the great carloads of slag being dumped, red hot and smoking, into the ravine that skirts the steel mill. The dying fire lights the sky with a dull orange glow. Frieda and I lag behind, staring at the patch of color surrounded by black. It is impossible not to feel a shiver when our feet leave the gravel path and sink into the dead grass in the field.

Our house is old, cold, and green. At night a kerosene lamp lights one large room. The others are braced in darkness, peopled by roaches and mice. Adults do not talk to us -- they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information. When we trip and fall down they glance at us; if we cut or bruise ourselves, they ask us are we crazy. When we catch colds, they shake their heads in disgust at our lack of consideration. How, they ask us, do you expect anybody to get anything done if you all are sick? We cannot answer them. Our illness is treated with contempt, foul Black Draught, and castor oil that blunts our minds.

When, on a day after a trip to collect coal, I cough once, loudly, through bronchial tubes already packed tight with phlegm, my mother frowns. "Great Jesus. Get on in that bed. How many times do I have to tell you to wear something on your head? You must be the biggest fool in this town. Frieda? Get some rags and stuff that window."

Frieda restuffs the window. I trudge off to bed, full of guilt and self-pity. I lie down in my underwear, the metal in the black garters hurts my legs, but I do not take them off, because it is too cold to lie stockingless. It takes a long time for my body to heat its place in the bed. Once I have generated a silhouette of warmth, I dare not move, for there is a cold place one-half inch in any direction. No one speaks to me or asks how I feel. In an hour or two my mother comes. Her hands are large and rough, and when she rubs the Vicks salve on my chest, I am rigid with pain. She takes two fingers' full of it at a time, and massages my chest until I am faint. Just when I think I will tip over into a scream, she scoops out a little of the salve on her forefinger and puts it in my mouth, telling me to swallow. A hot flannel is wrapped about my neck and chest. I am covered up with heavy quilts and ordered to sweat, which I do, promptly.

Later I throw up, and my mother says, "What did you puke on the bed clothes for? Don't you have sense enough to hold your head out the bed? Now, look what you did. You think I got time for nothing but washing up your puke?"

The puke swaddles down the pillow onto the sheet -- green-gray, with flecks of orange. It moves like the insides of an uncooked egg. Stubbornly clinging to its own mass, refusing to break up and be removed. How, I wonder, can it be so neat and nasty at the same time?

My mother's voice drones on. She is not talking to me. She is talking to the puke, but she is calling it my name: Claudia. She wipes it up as best she can and puts a scratchy towel over the large wet place. I lie down again. The rags have fallen from the window crack, and the air is cold. I dare not call her back and am reluctant to leave my warmth. My mother's anger humiliates me; her words chafe my cheeks, and I am crying. I do not know that she is not angry at me, but at my sickness. I believe she despises my weakness for letting the sickness "take holt." By and by I will not get sick; I will refuse to. But for now I am crying. I know I am making more snot, but I can't stop.

My sister comes in. Her eyes are full of sorrow. She sings to me: "When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls, someone thinks of me. . . ." I doze, thinking of plums, walls, and "someone."

But was it really like that? As painful as I remember? Only mildly. Or rather, it was a productive and fructifying pain. Love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup, eased up into that cracked window. I could smell it -- taste it -- sweet, musty, with an edge of wintergreen in its base -- everywhere in that house. It stuck, along with my tongue, to the frosted windowpanes. It coated my chest, along with the salve, and when the flannel came undone in my sleep, the clear, sharp curves of air outlined its presence on my throat. And in the night, when my coughing was dry and tough, feet padded into the room, hands repinned the flannel, readjusted the quilt, and rested a moment on my forehead. So when I think of autumn, I think of somebody with hands who does not want me to die.

Banned Book Wednesday

      Yesterday, I didn't have time to do a banned book. However, I had stopped by the library and just happened to look in the "Free Book" bin. I usually don't bother, as it's mostly magazines and such. However, here it was, waiting for me. A  used copy of Sons and Lovers! All for me! It's tattered, worn, broken and faded. They replaced this one with a newer copy. I love that this banned book came to me in this manner because it means that it was well read and is still read enough for the library to replace it. It even has that smell that a book takes on after it's been in a library for years and years. You know the one I'm talking about, that slightly musty, papery wonderful library smell. Oh do I love that smell.

D.H. Lawrence

Born September 1885, he became one of the most controversial writers of the 20th century. His father was a coal miner and heavy drinker. He was allowed to go to High School through winning a scholarship and later went on to university. In 1912 he met Frida vonvon Richthofen, the professor Ernest Weekly's wife and fell in love with her. Frieda left her husband and three children, and they eloped to Bavaria. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers appeared in 1913 and was based on his childhood . In 1914 he and Frieda were married.

During the First World War Lawrence and his wife were unable to obtain passports and were targets of constant harassment from the authorities. They were accused of spying for the Germans and officially expelled from Cornwall in 1917. The Lawrences were not permitted to emigrate until 1919, when their years of wandering began. Lawrence's best known work is Lady Chatterly's Lover, first published privately in Florence in 1928. It tells of the love affair between a wealthy, married woman, and a man who works on her husband's estate. The book was banned for a time in both UK and the US as pornographic.

Banning of the Book

While Lady Chatterly's Lover is certainly more famous and more widely banned D.H. Lawrences other books have come under fire due to the "obsenity" of Lady. Many times his books are all banned due to the fact that people refuse to read ANY of them.  While this is fading with time, his books are becoming more and more mainstream and seen as classics some high schools are still banning his books. This seems completely insane to me. It ranks up there with banning Shel Siverstein's children's books because he occasionally drew cartoons for Playboy.

You Too Could Be a Winner

As soon as I am done re-reading this book I'll have some sort of contest (not sure yet what kind) and one of you will be the lucky winner of the book!

Bong Hits 4 Sandra Day O'Conner

Yes I know that she's not a Justice anymore but it sounds funny.

What is Bong Hits 4 Jesus? How could anyone possibly forget this story?  However, I have been nicely surprised by the coverage found in the local Anchorage Daily News. This is a case that I have been following off and on for the last five years. It's an important case that originated right here in little ol' Alaska. Before I get too carried away let me give you the history of the beast.

History

Five years ago in Juneau (capital of the state) high school student Joe Frederick was sitting in the hallway of the school reading when the vice-principal came up to him and informed him that he couldn't be in the hallway unattended. He told her that he had a right to sit in HIS school and read french existentialists. She called the cops, and he left (I think she hates Camus). In protest to this unjust treatment he turned his back on the flag during the pledge of allegiance (who the hell still says the pledge of allegiance after the 5th grade)? His father was called to the school, they wanted to talk about a possible suspension. By this time Joe was a mite upset, and he decided to do something to raise the freedom of speech issue.  Boy did he.

January 24, 2002: the boy and his friends unfurled a banner reading Bong Hits 4 Jesus as the Olympic torch passed by. The principal, Deborah Morse, crossed the street and crumpled up his banner. She then suspended him from school for ten days.  It was originally five days but he talked back, quoting Jefferson on free speech (what? a kid who learned something in school, clearly a trouble maker). The next week, while serving his suspension he was arrested for trespass because he was parked at the municipal swimming pool. His car was impounded and searched for drugs, he didn't have any, but they still listed a Taco Bell straw as drug paraphernalia. The charges were dropped after they realized that his car wasn't as close to the school property line as they had thought. Oops, their bad. 

When Joe finally went back to school he was once again suspended  for wearing a Leatherman tool in the hallway. He was arrested yet again for failing to signal while driving, police saying that he had failed to pay a previous fine. Yet again they were mistaken, clerical error. Sorry Joe. Tired of being harassed Joe sued the city for harassment.  The city agreed to pay him $22,000 without conceding that they were in the wrong.

Eventually his father got fired. He was the risk manager for the school district's insurance company. The company was going to have to shell out some major bucks due to the federal lawsuit. For a long time he was able to just avoid anything dealing with the suit.  When the company wanted him to intervene with his son and he refused they demoted, and then fired him. He sued the company and was awarded $200,000 plus legal fees. Although after this he was unable to find work in the insurance business and took a job teaching English in China.

That's the short, short version of the matter. 

The Case:

School District's Point: Joe violated the school district's anti-drug policy by holding up the banner and a quasi-school event.

Joe's Point: The school had no right to violate his freedom of speech.

Joe appealed several times to the school board. After they did nothing he filed a suit in in the district court (That's the U.S. district court for the district of Alaska). They thought that the school district had a valid point: their drug policy is clearly stated.  Joe appealed this decision to the next court: the ninth circuit. Well they thought otherwise. The court, relying on Tinker v. Des Moines INdependent Community School District (1969), where the Supreme Court upheld the right's of students to wear anti-war armbands. The ninth district panel held that Joe had not disturbed the school's educational function. Not only that but they're holding Ms. Morse personally liable for this, yep, she's going to have to shell out the money herself. Here's some bits from the opinion:

to school that day prior to the banner display, that the banner display was off school property across Glacier Avenue from the campus, and that there were a lot of people, students and non-students, there to watch the torch pass. Other students filed affidavits saying that they were just released, not required to stay together or with their teachers, except for the gym class, and school administrators did not attempt to stop students who got bored and left. Frederick says that the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” language was designed to be meaningless and funny, in order to get on television, but Principal Morse says that “bong hits” means puffs of marijuana and the words promote marijuana use.

Frederick says (without contradiction) that he had not gone

Thus, the question comes down to whether a school may, in the absence of concern about disruption of educational activities, punish and censor non-disruptive, off-campus speech by students during school-authorized activities because the speech promotes a social message contrary to the one favored by the school. The answer under controlling, long-existing precedent is plainly “No.”

Public schools are instrumentalities of government, and government is not entitled to supres speech that undermines whatever missions it defines for itself. What schools are entitled to do, as Fraser makes clear, is supress speech that disrupts the good order necessary to conduct their educational function. No educational function was disrupted by the banner displayed during the Coca-Cola sponsored Olympics event. One can hypothoesize off-campus events for which the students might be released that would be educational and curricular in nature and would be disrupted by speech such as Fredrick's. For example, on a school field trip as part of the social studies curriculum to observe a court in session, it might be the case that the school ban the wearing of Cohen's famous jacket. But a Coca Cola sponsered promotion as the Olympic torch passed by on a public street was not such an event.

"Thus, having determined that the "facts alleged show [Morse's] conduct violated a constitutional right" that "the right was clearly established," and that "it would be clear to a reasonable [principal] that [her] conduct was unlawful in the situation [she] confronted," we hold that the defendant Morse is not entitled to qualified immunity.

Morse has petioned the Supreme Court and they took the case, not only that BUT president himself asked them to. It should come as no surprise to you that he wants them to find that schools have more power over students, their activities and their rights.

The Players

Ah, the wonderous Kenneth Starr, defender of schools and prosecutor of philandering presidents. His firm is representing the principal Morse pro bono.

Douglas Mertz of Juneau, Alaska. Bet he never thought that he'd get to the Supreme Court.

Edwin Kneedler: Filing as Amicus Curiae supporting petitioners aka:  He, on behalf of the Deputy Solicitor General is supporting Ms. Morse's position. This sort of thing happens all the time.

Oral argument was heard on Monday and boy did the Justices rip a new one for just about everyone. Seems they're pretty pissed off about the whole thing.

They're pissed that people might try to infringe upon constitutional rights.

They're pissed that this is even an issue

They're pissed off that Morse wasn't granted immunity from suit.

They're pissed that Joe wants any money at all.

Now we just wait a few months to see what the verdict is.

Banned Book Wednesday

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

This Friday, through live simulcast (isn't simulcast always live though?) Ray Bradbury will be at the Lousac Library to discuss his book Fahrenheit 451 for The Big Read.  I'm glad I already have a copy as there aren't many left on the bookstore shelves. As an homage (you're not one of those horrible people who say it oh maj are you? You probably say her b rather than erb too don't you? I'm keeping my eye on you pal) to his appearance I'm dedicating this BBW to this most famous of his books.

     I first got ahold of this book in high school, a teacher had us read that, Animal Farm, Brave New World (the book where I learned the word ignoble), Anthem (I hate you Ayn Rand), and 1984.  It was a bit of an overload to a seventeen year old. Perhaps if she had spaced them out I would have liked 1984, but it just seemed to drag and drag and drag, by the end I wanted Winston dead just so the book would end. Brave New World though was great. Sorry, I digress. By now you all know how I feel about the burning of books and so this story really took hold in my mind.  I could see this actually happening, I could see a couple of my fellow students chasing down a person just to run them over for the fun of the thing. It didn't really seem like the far distant future to me and it frightened me. It really scared the crap out of me. I didn't want to live in a future like that, and I swore that I wouldn't let it happen.  It's always stayed with me in the back of my mind. It's perhaps due to this book that my loathing for anything that quashes the freedom of speech is so pronounced, but more on that later. 

A Bit of History

Bradbury wrote the book in 1951 orginally as a novella in the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction. It was published as a book in 1953. There has been at least one movie and several radio dramatizations made of it. The book concerns itself with what Bradbury calls the "thought-destroying force" of censorship aka the book burnings in Nazi Germany and Stalin's suppression of authors and books in the Soviet Union. What is most ironic about this book is that unbeknowst to Bradbury, his editor released a censored version of the book in 1967. This version eliminated the words "damn" and "hell".  Bradbury put a stop to that and later versions of the book include a coda where he dicusses his views of censorship, even well meant censorship.

Banning of the Book 

When the book was released in 1953 the United States was clenched in the thrall of Josesph McCarthy, or as I like to call him Mr. Grouchy Pants.  Anyway, Mr. Pants was at the helm of a huge hunt for anyone who might be a Communist.  He couldn't stand communists, they killed his father (all of them, all at the same time, killed his father)*. He convinced other people to hate the Communists too, and they went along because it was before MTV and they didn't have Bevis and Butthead to watch in order to kill time. Plus, Mensa had rejected their applications and their egos were still smarting from this.  So all of these people with nothing to do, and bruised wittle egos set their sights on Terrorists er I mean Communists and they had all of these hearings at Congress because they heard from a guy called Arthur Miller ** that this was the thing to do to people who your cousin's friend's boyfriend's sister said might be a Communist. Bradbury's book (an expanded version of his original) was partially in response to the censorship brought on by Mr. Pants and his gang of Mensa rejects. 

** Just to let you know in case you didn't Arthur Miller's book The Crucible was written in response to the McCarthy trials. Oh, and Communists didn't kill J.M's father (thought that I'd clear that up).

Bradbury's book would be banned all over the United States, in fact, it is still banned in many high schools due to language (yeah, like your 17 year old hasn't heard the world damn before). 

Although it's legnthy I want to post Bradbury's coda:

About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed reading my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles.

But, she added, wouldn't it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more women's characters and roles?

A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn't I "do them over"?

Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire storyx` should be dropped.

Two weeks ago my mount of mail delivered forth a pip-squeak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story "The Fog Horn" in a high school reader.

In my story, I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a "God-Light." Looking up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in "the Presence."

The editors had deleted "God-Light" and "in the Presence."

Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for school readers put together a volume with some 400 (count 'em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book?

Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito - out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron's mouth twitch - gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer - lost!

Every story, slenderized, starved, blue-penciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Doestoevsky read like - in the finale - Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant's attention - shot dead.

Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture? How did I react to all of the above?

By "firing" the whole lot.

By sending rejection slips to each and every one.

By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib / Republican, Mattachine / FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.

"Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the window, they're coming through the door," are the words to an old song. The fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butchers/censors every month. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.

A final test for old Job II here: I sent a play, Leviathan 99, off to a university theater a month ago. My play is based on the "Moby Dick" mythology, dedicated to Melville, and concerns a rocket crew and a blind space captain who venture forth to encounter a Great White Comet and destroy the destroyer. My drama premieres as an opera in Paris this autumn.

But, for now, the university wrote back that they hardly dared to my play - it had no women in it! And the ERA ladies on campus would descend with ballbats if the drama department even tried.

Grinding my bicuspids into powder, I suggested that would mean, from now on, no more productions of Boys in the Band (no women), or The Women (no men). Or, counting heads, male and female, a good lot of Shakespeare that would never be seen again, especially if you count lines and find that all the good stuff went to the males!

I wrote back maybe they should do my play one week, and The Women the next. They probably thought I was joking, and I'm not sure that I wasn't.

For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real word is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall.

For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.

In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.

All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm going out again, giving it the old try.

And no one can help me. Not even you."

     -- Ray Bradbury

 

Banned Book Wednesday

The Witches by Roald Dahl

            

Several people have mentioned this book to me and I must admit, it’s a great one.  It also ranks as the 9^th most banned book on the

ALA

’s list.  I love Roald Dahl, but what kid doesn’t.  Certainly no child that I would have played with.  Dahl’s books have been banned across the nation for several reasons.  I think that parents don’t like that in many of his stories there are scary, terrifying and evil adults, along with a lot of black humor the macabre.  In quite a few of his books, authoritarian adults are wicked and are punished severely by the end of his book.  For instance, in Matilda, not only are the parents neglectful of her, but the head of the school torments the children.  His lack of remorse for these people and their comeuppance in the end of his books most likely leads some adults want to ban his books. Here are some of the other reasons that people have banned his The Witches:

-He has been accused of sexism by some groups, due to the fact that most of his evil characters are women. These critics point to statements such as the following in making their case against Dahl: "But the fact remains that all witches are women. There is no such thing as a male witch". However, these same people seem to ignore the statement that follows the first: "On the other hand, a ghoul is always a male". They also have clearly not read some of his adult stories, remember the one where the wife is abused by her husband and she may or may not have let him die? (Can anyone remember what that one is called)?

-Adults often die in his books, in James and the Giant Peach, the parents are killed by a rhino that got loose from the zoo, in The Witches I think the parents are killed in a car accident.  This is seen as too traumatic for children. 

-Evil people and creatures are usually either captured and kept locked up, or as in The Witches turned into mice.  There is no salvation for the wicked in Dahl’s world. 

-Dahl was Anti-Semitic.

-(And this is my favorite) He is sometimes criticized by witches and other magical groups for portraying witches in a poor light.

While Dahl was anti-Semitic and wrote an opinion of

Israel

that kept him from receiving a knighthood, most children don’t know this and it doesn’t come across in his writing for children. If we're banning books due to their author's beliefs then perhaps we shouldn't be teaching Poe in high schools. 

       Do you remember how horrible the witches were? There were scary, and wanted to rid the world of children. Also, the whole square toes thing creeped me out, more than the blue saliva even.  What I love about the book is that the kid stays a mouse. There’s no remedy for him, but he doesn’t seem to mind so that’s ok.  If you watched the movie and haven’t read the book, then you should know that they differ greatly in the end.  The movie has a happier ending where the kids are turned back.  Dahl was so upset about this that he protested with a megaphone outside of theaters telling people not to see the movie. 

     As sad as it is that he never saw any of his books turned into movies that he liked (he also hated Willy Wonka), I think his dark books paved the way for books such as Harry Potter and the Lemony Snicket books.  With a few generations of kids growing up on Dahl, dark children’s books have become more acceptable (although those books have their critics and book burners as well). 

Banned Book Wednesday

 

Tiger Eyes and Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume

This week I’m actually doing two banned books because they are from the same author. The first suggestion is Tiger Eyes and comes from Molly, who reminded me of this book while we were shopping in a thrift store a few weeks ago.  We both laughed at the old cover (which I have had a horrible time finding a photo of on the internet thanks to Robb for finding this one), the one that we had both grown up with.

There are several things that I remember about this book:

            1. Davey’s uncle was a total jerk, and often reminded me of my own jerkish uncle.

            2. It was one of the first books that I read that had to do with nuclear power and the evils of said energy.

            3. When Davey gets a shirt with the slogan “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”, she doesn’t understand the joke but laughs because all of the adults are laughing. I didn’t get it either and now that I do, I wouldn’t laugh, it’s a dumb joke and further proves the point that her uncle, who gave it to her, is a jerk.

            4. It made me want to visit the desert, and perhaps go on some sort of vision-quest there.

            5. It made me really happy when her mom moved them back.

            

      Judy Blume is listed by the American Library Association as the second most challenged author from 1990 through 2006.  I can see that, her books were often hard to find, my mom usually bought them for me at garage sales and Scholastic book drives.  God bless Scholastic book drives. Sorry, I got a little distracted there.  Anyway, she tackles death, sexuality, puberty and all of its woes, and other stuff that tends to be super taboo to some groups.  I’m not sure how much controversy her books still bring.  Do any of you have school aged children? Would you know?

            So the second book by Blume that I want to talk about is the illustrious Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret.

            This book was recently revamped, and a good thing too because when Judy wrote the original version sanitary pads were still (god help us all) held up by belts, and being a book about puberty, I think that would only serve to scare the hell out of girls who haven’t reached that point yet.  So my friend Robb has one of the best ever banned book stories about this book.  When he was a young boy, he scavenged the library looking for any book that might have sex in it.  Thinking for whatever reason that Margaret did he promptly read it.  What he got was a book about a preteen girl who deals with her family moving along with puberty.  While warping his fragile ten year old mind with as he says “ images of sanitary napkins attached to belts,” this became the least of his worries because before he finished the book he assumed it was about a girl getting pregnant (it’s not) and he relayed this prediction to his “psycho, unfunny,” Catholic babysitter who immediately jumped to her own conclusion: Robb was clearly possessed by a demon. Yes, I know, it’s extreme but this whole demon thing really came to a head when later, he and his cousin were playing in her pool.  They were having a little ten year old conversation about reincarnation.  Most likely wanting to get little Robb in trouble, the cousin mentions to the babysitter as she walked by, (and from here I’ll let him tell the story)

Adam to babysitter: “he believes in reincarnation.”

And her chubby head whipped around to me "Do you?" Though, it might have been "you do?"

And I said "yes" because I knew my mom believed in it and at 10 when unsure and questioned about belief you often attach yourself to your parents. I didn’t know what the hell I believed but I knew my mom did so that was my answer.

She stalked in to the house, came back out in her bathing suit (not really attractive. I’m pretty sure it was black) then we sat on a little shelf built into the side of the pool, waist deep in water. And she sprinkled me with holy chlorinated water and pleaded in Spanglish for the demons to leave.

And then I remember having this horribly irrational fear that when my mom came to pick me up later that day I wouldn't be able to understand her because she believed in reincarnation and now I didn’t, or something like that. Kind of a backward tower of Babel thing.

See what reading will get you? That’s right holy chlorinated water. 

If you have a banned book story please email me at ronia.rd@gmail.com. I might like it and post it.

Banned Book Wednesday

I hate the banning of books. Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in censorship, I do. For instance I don’t believe that the complete guide to Kama Sutra should be in an elementary school. For one thing I wouldn’t want the wee ones to injure themselves attempting new moves on the jungle gym. On the other hand I have a deep seated belief in the freedom of speech. My first banned book memory is a strong one. I loved Shel Silverstein growing up. He was wacky, lovely, strange, and seemed to understand me more than any author I’d read before, I was in complete awe when I first read Where the Sidewalk Ends, I cried my heart out when I discovered “The Giving Tree.” Around 8 or 9 I was over at my aunt’s house (she was the one who had first shown me Shel). I rushed over to her bookcase to get my beloved Sidewalk and it wasn’t there. Baffled I asked her where it was. She has discarded it because apparently it had come to light that Shel had done some work for Playboy. Even my little mind was confused, who cared, I wasn’t reading Playboy, I wasn’t looking at anything bad in Sidewalk, so why would it matter? My mom later explained to me about banned books and book burning (I almost had an aneurism when I learned of that one). I’d like to thank my very cool mom for being just as outraged at banned books as I was then. In all likelihood it is due to her that I have such a passion for banned books. This isn’t to say that my parents let us read whatever we wanted to. Just the opposite, they scrutinized every book, tape and movie that they could. I think that I watched half as many movies as my friends due to violence, sex, or even politics (my mom didn’t let us watch Mr. Mom because it reinforced the idea that it should be shocking for men to take care of children, don’t ever get her started on that one with her). However, my parents believed that it was up to them, not libraries, schools, or anyone else (except maybe my scary grandma) to tell me what to read or watch. She also was always out there, buying books that the school had banned that she thought I should read, many a Judy Blume and Gary Paulson novel entered into our home that way. In honor of my mom and all of the banned books out there, I’m starting Banned Book Wednesday. The idea sprung from this article in the Guardian about Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky, which won this year's prestigious Newbery Medal. I haven’t read the book yet but you can believe that I will. I’ll tell you how it is. If you have a banned book that you’d like me to highlight send me your story and maybe I’ll post it. (See, I believe in censorship, I put on my blog what I want to). Without further ado may I present book one of Banned Book Wednesday: The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron From Booklist Lucky, age 10, lives in tiny Hard Pan, California (population 43), with her dog and the young French woman who is her guardian. With a personality that may remind some readers of Ramona Quimby, Lucky, who is totally contemporary, teeters between bravado--gathering insect specimens, scaring away snakes from the laundry--and fear that her guardian will leave her to return to France. Looking for solace, Lucky eavesdrops on the various 12-step meetings held in Hard Pan (of which there are plenty), hoping to suss out a "higher power" that will see her through her difficulties. Her best friend, Lincoln, is a taciturn boy with a fixation for tying knots; another acquaintance, Miles, seems a tiresome pest until Lucky discovers a secret about his mother. Patron's plotting is as tight as her characters are endearing. Lucky is a true heroine, especially because she's not perfect: she does some cowardly things, but she takes pains to put them to rights. Francisca GoldsmithCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.