What’S Behind Banned Books? Among Other Reasons, Parents Challenge Books Over Sex And Scariness
Kristen Renz flipped through the alphabet book her 7-year-old daughter was reading and could not believe it came from a school library.
“An Alphabet of Rotten Kids” lived up to its title. The characters, from Agatha to Zazu, set dozens of bad examples for children, Renz thought. She wanted the book removed from Woodridge Elementary School.
The Spokane mother shot off a complaint to district administrators, listing each page she objected to: A, D, F, G, H, K, M, N, U, X, Y and Z.
Jacci Bottler, the school librarian who’d chosen the book, didn’t think Renz stood a chance. Even kids who don’t like reading can’t resist rhymes about mischievous children, she reasoned. And look at Shel Silverstein, who wrote about a camel wearing a bra to cover its humps. He’d survived angry challenges by two parents.
So when she was ordered to remove David Elliott’s alphabet book, Bottler, a librarian for 22 years, was furious.
Who had the power to make a such a decision? Bottler wanted to know. How did they decide? And why this book and not others like it?
A former teacher rushed to Bottler’s defense, accusing educators of ignoring the First Amendment and having “a cavalier attitude” toward book bans. The book’s author shook a finger at school administrators, saying the ban was far naughtier than anything his characters could dream up.
It’s a scenario played out several times a year in Eastern Washington and North Idaho schools: A parent’s jaw drops while reading a book their child brings home. It’s too sexy! Or too religious. Too satanic, too stereotypical, too violent, too scary. They complain to the school. And educators face a decision that proves controversial either way.
Because of inconsistent record-keeping, it’s impossible to know exactly how many books are challenged or banned. The American Library Association, which observes Banned Books Week this week, received reports of 478 challenges to library materials in 1998. Employees figure four times as many aren’t reported to them.
A survey of school districts in Spokane and Kootenai counties shows 77 challenges of books and other school materials in the past two decades, including three last year. But not all districts keep thorough records, and some admit educators pull books they find inappropriate without formal review.
Area parents who challenge books stand a fair chance of getting some action, though most books aren’t banned.
Eight books, two filmstrips and one song were banned outright, and a magazine subscription was canceled. More than a dozen books were shuffled to higher grade levels or limited to certain sections in libraries, which critics call censorship in disguise.
Nationally, books with sexual references are most often challenged. Locally, it’s the scary books that parents most often want banned.
The vast majority of the complaints reported here occur in Spokane School District 81, the largest in Eastern Washington.
The challenges vary from year to year. A religious dad wanted to yank a book about mysticism, while a teacher questioned a filmstrip that describes snowflakes as “God’s creation.” Some parents target books they say feature unflattering stereotypes, while sex sends others storming to the superintendent’s office.
The popular “Where’s Waldo?” survived despite a couple’s complaint that it showed cartoon illustrations of kids opening dressing rooms and a dog sniffing a child’s bottom.
But “Shyness,” by Phillip G. Zimbardo, didn’t make the cut. With passages about the effects of shyness on oral sex and lines such as “Sex may make the world go round, but the trip usually makes the shy person nauseous,” the self-help book was relegated to a shelf available to high-schoolers only by request.
A book containing the song “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” was banned, while one showing beer at a black family’s picnic remained.
Nearly half the books that anger Inland Northwest parents have been challenged in other parts of the country, said Judith Krug, who fights book bans as director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom in Chicago.
Krug skimmed a list of books challenged in the Spokane area and paused at popular titles like Judy Blume’s “Blubber” and John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” At least, she said, chuckling, kids here are reading well-written books.
“I’m delighted to know these kinds of books are in the libraries up there,” said Krug. “The wonderful thing about libraries is that someone gives us choice. You don’t even have choice if the books are pulled.”
But not everyone whole-heartedly embraces the selections librarians make, and that’s when the review process kicks in. When a parent files a complaint, many districts form committees of school employees and a few citizens, each of whom reads the book. They discuss it, read reviews and vote. A top administrator makes the final call.
Roger Riggs, a retired Riverside civics teacher, said the process is flawed because it allows for “the tyranny of a few.”
“It’s absolutely ludicrous that one person can cause a book to be banned,” he said. And the outcome could vary drastically, depending on who’s on a given committee, Riggs said. “It’s so subjective. How can it be anything but?”
Cynthia Lambarth, who has the last word on whether to ban books in Spokane District 81, said committees include several educators and a couple of citizens who are selected to represent a variety of views. A member of the district’s equity team is invited, too.
“It’s not possible to take a communitywide vote of every book that gets on a library shelf,” Lambarth said.
“I don’t want to say it’s the luck of the draw, but we try not to stack committees,” added Fran Mester, the administrator who oversees them. District 81 has considered 59 challenges in the past two decades.
Committee members are also asked to look beyond the offending pages and consider the entire book, Mester said.
Take Shel Silverstein’s book, “A Light in the Attic,” which a Spokane woman feared would badly influence her third-grade twins. The mother noted a piece in the poetry collection about a manipulative, nagging girl who threatens to die if she doesn’t get a pony. She does just that when her parents don’t comply.
The last line: “This is a good story to read to your folks when they won’t buy you something you want.”
Compare that to a passage from “An Alphabet of Rotten Kids:”
“Ferdinand,
that little squirt,
filled the living room with dirt.
When spanked, he told his cousin, Bert,
`So what! It didn’t even hurt!”’
Both books star troublemakers, but Mester said the committee kept Silverstein and not Elliot’s “Alphabet” partly because “Attic” included rhymes and pictures that weren’t about bad kids.
Jay Walter, who spent years overseeing book challenges in the Central Valley School District, acknowledges a book’s chances of being banned depend on who is chosen to review it.
“Depending on the philosophy of the individuals on the committee, you could certainly move one direction or the other,” he said. Still, he said he doesn’t know of a fairer way to review books.
It was such a committee that kept “The Tale of the Dark Crystal” by Donna Bass in Progress Elementary School’s library four years ago after a father complained that it’s violent and demonic.
“The book blurs the lines between absolute good and absolute evil, thus confusing a child’s understanding of right and wrong,” Alan Creach wrote in his complaint.
“Who is to decide the blurring of lines between absolute good and absolute evil?” Walter said. “That depends on who’s reading and interpreting it.”
Parents are just as upset as librarians when committees vote against them.
Ten years after LuAnn Suryan’s request for a book ban was denied, she keeps the disappointing paperwork in her files. It reminds her of how patronized she felt.
The book: “Anastasia Krupnik” by Lois Lowry. Suryan’s objection: The 10-year-old lead character who wants to name her newborn brother One Ball Reilly. “Not referring to baseball,” added Suryan.
Then-Superintendent Gerald Hester wrote the committee’s response.
“Anastasia’s growth throughout the book, and the development of her own `inner eye’ made up for the name that was chosen for her baby brother.”
Says Suryan, still skeptical: “People were telling me the children wouldn’t understand what (One Ball Reilly) means. I thought they were naive.”
Pamela Fuller is steamed about a District 81 decision made five years ago. She objected to “Tar Beach,” the award-winning story Faith Ringgold wrote about a black family in Harlem. Fuller’s criticisms lie in a single paragraph about a rooftop picnic:
“Mommy is roasting peanuts and frying chicken, and Daddy will bring home a watermelon. Mr. and Mrs. Honey will bring the beer and their old green card table.”
Her daughter, Sarah, then 7, shouldn’t be exposed to such stereotypes in school, said Fuller. But committee members who reviewed the book said that, while they could do without the beer, the story also reflected positive experiences from the author’s life. The book won.
Books have been snatched from Inland Northwest schools for myriad reasons: sex, foul language, racial stereotypes, religion and characters who set bad examples. But never, so far, because a story is scary.
And that’s the main complaint in a third of all challenges, topping even sex.
“Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep” by Jack Prelutsky survived a challenge in Post Falls, despite a verse about a ghoul with an appetite for schoolchildren:
“He lunges fiercely through the air
as they come out to play,
then grabs a couple by the hair
and drags them far away.”
In Spokane, educators approved “Meet the Werewolf” by Georgess McHargue even though a father feared lines like these would pique kids’ interest in the supernatural:
“Some werewolves in their human form are fierce and frightening-looking, but some look just like your next-door neighbors, your classmates, and the people you meet on the bus.”
Says Mester: “Scary is really in the eye of the beholder. It’s not as clear cut an issue as the violence or sexual language or stereotyping.”
While authors generally don’t want their books evicted from libraries, Paul Saenger, curator of rare books at the Newberry Library in Chicago, says there have been some advantages - at least historically.
People like him devote careers to collecting books banned as far back as the 16th century. Now the authors’ words - often religious philosophies - live on in treasured collections.
He doubts that’ll hold true for today’s authors, though. With the Internet’s endless resources, pure censorship is hard to come by, Saenger says.
Still, a third of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century have been banned or challenged.
David Elliott kept that in mind when a bunch of people he’d never heard of from Spokane rejected Horatio, bad as you please, who would stuff his mouth with frozen peas. And sneeze.
Of course the 51-year-old New Hampshire man was offended. It was the first time the characters he’d dreamed up, A to Z, had been declared unfit for children.
But then he thought of the Modern Library and grinned.
“In a perverse kind of way, I felt very proud,” he said. “It puts you in very good company.”
Two sidebars appeared with the story: 1. Banned books week The American Library Association observes banned books week through saturday.
2. The most challenged books: A list These were the nation’s most frequently challenged books in 1998: 1. “The Chocolate War” By Robert Cormier The book, written for teens, is a fictionalized account of a boy’s trials and triumphs at boarding school. Published in 1974, it has often been challenged for being “sexually explicit.” 2. “Of Mice And Men” By John Steinbeck This short work by a Nobel prize-winning author most often is challenged for using “offensive language” and being “unsuited to age group.” It survived a challenge in the mead school district. 3. “Goosebumps” and “Fear Street” Series By R.L. Stine These books have been challenged in schools and libraries across the country for being “too frightening for young people” and depicting “occult or satanic” themes. A challenge against “Goosebumps” in Spokane was dropped. 4. “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” By Maya Angelou Maya Angelou’s autobiographical novel has increasingly been the focus of challenges in school libraries. Objections center on the explicit description of a rape and other sexual abuse she suffered as a child. 5. “The Giver” By Lois Lowry This critically acclaimed novel has been challenged for being “violent” and “sexually explicit,” using “offensive language,” and also for its treatment of infanticide and euthanasia. It was unsuccessfully challenged in Medical Lake. 6. “Always Running” By Luis Rodriguez This book has been challenged for its depiction of gang life, for being “sexually explicit,” “violent,” “racist,” and “unsuitable for teens.” 7. “Crazy Lady” By Jane Leslie Conly This work is often challenged for “offensive language.” 8. “Blubber,” By Judy Blume The children’s book is often challenged for “offensive language” and being “inappropriate” for its intended age group of preteens. It survived two challenges in Spokane and one in Central Valley. Source: Staff Research And The American Library Association