Banned Books Week – Looking for Alaska

It’s my favorite literary week of the year! Happy Banned Books Week, reader!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Banned Books week I’ve provided some information, before I begin talking about my favorite banned books.

What is Banned Books Week?

Banned Books Week is the annual celebration of the freedom to read. Every year, books are challenged in public schools and libraries around the world for their content or their ideals. Banned Books Week is a chance to raise awareness of these challenged books and the silencing of stories that results.

Why celebrate Banned Books Week?

Every year people try to take away readers’ power to decide what is right for them and their children to read by bringing challenges to remove books from school and public libraries. This ultimately takes away the freedom of choice and the important stories told through books. Banned Books Weeks is an opportunity to celebrate and educate people in the importance of diverse stories.

What kinds of books are being challenged?

All kinds of books are being challenged: historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction, religious fiction, narrative nonfiction, self-help books. You name it, there has been a book in that genre that has been questioned. (Okay, to be fair, I’m not sure about cookbooks, but I wouldn’t doubt it.)

It’s important that we don’t allow our right to choose what we read be taken by somebody else. And it’s important we continue to fight for the freedom for authors to publish the stories they need to tell. Books are important. The stories they tell are important. Lives are changed by books daily, The limiting of stories limits voices, and diversity, and freedoms in ways that are unacceptable.

The first time challenged books became a real issue to me was in 2008. John Green posted a video on the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel about his book, Looking for Alaska, being challenged by parents at a high school in New York. I had not read Looking for Alaska, yet, but I was appalled that people were trying to limit students’ access to a book at all.

After watching this video, I fell down the research rabbit hole of challenged and banned books. And what I found was disconcerting to say the least. People were banning and challenging books for the stupidest reasons! Winnine the Pooh was banned because the anthropomorphic stuffed bear didn’t wear pants? Of Mice and Men was banned because it took God’s name in vain? This is ridiculous. I know entire human beings who use God’s name in vain and we haven’t petitioned to ban them, yet.

I grew a deep affinity for banned books. There was something magical about a book that upset somebody so badly, they had to seek to have it removed. Do you know what I noticed about these books? They’re good books. They’re well written and they hold great stories (mostly; there are always exceptions). And it makes sense, I guess. Books that are poorly written are ignored, right? They have their own slew of other issues, like–I don’t know–being bad books.

I have an issue with authority; it runs deep. It’s been a lifelong problem. It is probably this lifelong issue that causes me to really love the books that somebody else tells me not to read. And I know I’m not alone in that. It makes me wonder how many banned books have been read by my fellow rebels-without-causes just to “stick it to the man.”

This week, I’m going to write each day about a different banned/challenged book that I’ve loved.

Looking for Alaska is a Young Adult fiction novel by John Green (one of my top favorite authors.) Though it came onto my radar in 2008, when it was challenged, I didn’t wind up reading it for the first time until 2010. College was an interesting time in my reading life. I had decided that college meant a more mature me, a me who didn’t read kids’ or YA fiction. I read serious books and thought serious thoughts.

Not reading Looking for Alaska didn’t stop me from being offended over its challenge, however. It made me angry to think that there were parents who believed they were entitled to limit not just the freedoms of their own children but the freedoms of every child in the school. And while I know that many students had access to public libraries and bookstores at the time, I also know that many students–myself included–did not have access to a public library or ready access to a bookstore. I lived in the middle of nowhere and if my school didn’t have the book, there was a large chance I wouldn’t get to read it.

It brought me pure rage.

What really enraged me was the reason it was being challenged. It was challenged because of a scene of a sexual nature.

Now, I’ll be honest, as a teacher of middle school and high school, I don’t always want my students reading about teenage sexual relations. But it has nothing to do with the content and everything to do with the emotional maturity of the student in question. I wouldn’t just blanket dismiss a book because of sexual content.

And if parents were so up in arms about kids reading a book with sexual content, why weren’t they going after television? Why weren’t they angry that shows like Sex in the City were allowed to exist at all? Why weren’t they mad that the cast of Friends freely and openly talked about their sexual relationships? Why weren’t parents angry that prime time was filled with innuendo?

Why weren’t people coming after the radio? Since the music of The Beatles, music has been getting increasingly more sexual in nature. Were these parents running with their flames and pitchforks to their local “Mix of the 80’s, 90’s, and today” stations to demand they only play wholesome music about patty-cake and yellow ribbons? Why was it acceptable for these forms of media to have content of sexual nature but not the books their children read? Especially when the content in the book was minimal, compared to the content in other forms of media.

The only conclusion I could come to at the time is that parents didn’t actually want to limit all media. If Friends-in-syndication were taken off the air for its sexual content, they wouldn’t get to watch it. If all media had been regulated this way, they wouldn’t get to listen to Boyz II Men or Marvin Gaye. It’s much easier to regulate media you never intend to consume.

“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”
–  François Rabelais

François Rabelais

Looking for Alaska is a wonderful book about a boy seeking is own Great Perhaps. It’s a coming of age tale and deals very seriously with heavy topics important to today’s teenagers. It was a book that captivated me and held my attention. Anything I can say about Looking for Alaska, John Green has already said in the video I linked earlier in this post.

What I know about banned books, I owe to Looking for Alaska. It is the book that inspired me to learn more, to fight harder, and the treasure the diverse and wonderful stories that captivate people so strongly, they feel the need to end their existence completely.

What are you favorite banned books? Leave a comment and let me know!

Yours,
The Plucky Reader