Uncreated Conscience

As it’s Banned Books Week, I’ve been doing a bit of musing about the subject in the past few days. I just finished John Green‘s most excellent PAPER TOWNS (review to follow soon), which I believe was challenged somewhere in this country, although for what conceivable reason I have no idea.

Verboten.

I grew up in a household which banned books. My parents are well-intentioned, lovely people who tried to instill in me a love of reading from an early age. Mum and Dad are not readers themselves, but nevertheless did their best by me. Our nightly routine included Mum bedding me down and Dad reading out loud to me until it was time to switch on the nightlights.

Unfortunately, because my parents are not readers, they didn’t necessarily care to review the books they perfunctorily forbade me to read. For instance, THE BABYSITTERS’ CLUB was proscribed in our house. Why? I have no idea. My mother insisted the books were “trashy”. (She’s never read one in her life.) I had to sneak home a few from the school library. I don’t know what she meant by “trashy”, but I suspect it has something to do with literary quality vs. book quantity. I mean, it doesn’t get more wholesome than THE BABYSITTERS’ CLUB!

Verboten

In some respects, I can understand why GOOSEBUMPS were not approved reading material. To give a little background: Mum is a Methodist, my grandmother is a Presbyterian, and my father is a lapsed Mormon. Clearly, GOOSEBUMPS allowed Satan to enter our house. Didn’t stop me from sneaking them home anyway to pull out from between the mattresses after Dad had turned on the nightlight. I would then proceed to scare the living daylights out of myself and refuse to let my feet touch the edges of the bed.

To this day I thank the librarians. Without them, I wouldn’t have had access to be able to sneak the books home in the first place. And I don’t think I’m the worse for wear for having read CLAUDIA AND THE GENIUS OF ELM STREET or THE SCARECROW WALKS AT MIDNIGHT. I mean, if I hadn’t read a few GOOSEBUMPS books, I would have never understood that R.L. Stine had stolen a dozen plots from The Twilight Zone.

Verboten.

As a child, I obeyed my parents for the most part. I was a good kid, but the older I got, the more their blind and blanket banns irritated me. I still haven’t recovered from the Titanic debacle. It was only the biggest movie phenomenon ever. It was only the movie my junior high school friends wouldn’t shut up about. I was only the ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD who hadn’t seen it.

And why hadn’t I? The movie was rated PG-13 and I was still 12.

If my parents had seen the movie, reviewed it, and come to the conclusion that I was either emotionally or mentally incapable of handling the themes in the film, I still would have been pissed, but at least I could understand it. But they never did. They never saw it.

I’m sure most book banners/challengers are people like my parents: well-intentioned, lovely, and absolutely ignorant. I don’t mean ignorant in the sense that they aren’t intelligent, but ignorant because they simply don’t bother to educate themselves on the material they are summarily keeping out of the hands of children. If they would only read the books, if they could only see what they are banning in context, perhaps they could form more enlightened opinions.

It goes without saying that I am absolutely gaga over Philip Pullman’s HIS DARK MATERIALS. I was Lyra’s age when I first read THE GOLDEN COMPASS. I had to wait an agonizing three years between THE SUBTLE KNIFE and THE AMBER SPYGLASS. By the time I was 11, my parents realised they simply could not keep up with the sheer volume of books I consumed, but they also trusted my judgment. I was, after all, a good kid.

Fast forward a decade later, when my brother is also about Lyra’s age and I suggest THE GOLDEN COMPASS as a book series he would like. Unlike me, Trouble isn’t a reader. But THE GOLDEN COMPASS has a lot of things any 12-year-old could enjoy: adventure, a creepy gothic mystery, a bit of horror, POLAR BEARS, and talking animals.

However, it was around this time that the film version of THE GOLDEN COMPASS was being released and my parents got wind of the “the movie is about killing God!” theory. (UTTER RIDICULOUSNESS.) My mother decided, based on misinformation spread by the stupid Catholic leagues, that this was not something my brother should be reading.

I was furious. These are my favourite books of all time. Before the stupid, stupid Catholic banners got a hold of it, my parents didn’t care one way or another about THE GOLDEN COMPASS. But because they heard (but not read) that the books were about “killing God”, they plucked the book out of my brother’s hands.

For the record, THERE IS NO KILLING GOD. Lord Asriel may talk about destroying The Authority (not God), but he never does. I had a serious talking-to with my mother about this, saying if she had only read the goddamned books she would understand that they were about growing-up, and that it was okay to lose innocence and gain experience, not this anti-religious claptrap she thought they were.

Ignorance is the worst and most prevalent weapon in a book banner’s arsenal. I’m sure you’ll find that most people who challenge novels are not readers themselves, that they only skimmed to find relevant passages, and didn’t bother to absorb the work as a whole. The only way to fight ignorance is to keep those books available and on the shelves, to be read and absorbed and understood by someone who could appreciate them.

We can’t protect the innocent from the world; we can only give them the tools to deal with it. And those tools are books.