First They Came for the Guinea Pigs

Jan Gardner’s “Shelf Life” column in last Sunday’s Boston Globe highlighted how Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by local author-illustrator Sarah S. Brannen, has the unlucky distinction of being among the ten most frequently “challenged” books of 2008. Because it depicts two guinea pigs doing something that’s legal and actually encouraged for people in this state: getting married. Apparently there are a lot of anti-marriage (or anti-guinea pig) people out there.

Printz Award winner Laurie Halse Anderson just learned about new challenges to her novels Twisted and Speak. One of those situations was quickly resolved, but two more are going on. To one committee she’s written:

I suspect the roots of the parental concern about Twisted are the scenes in which teenagers make stupid, dangerous, and occasionally horrifying decisions.

Why on earth would someone like me put things like that in a book?

Because readers who can experience those decisions – by reading about them – and appreciate the consequences of those actions - by seeing those consequences affect the lives of a book’s characters - are less likely to do the stupid, dangerous and occasionally horrifying things themselves.

Verse novelist Ellen Hopkins just got disinvited from a school visit in Oklahoma because one parent challenged one of her young adult books about addiction, Glass. Hopkins wrote that series after helping her own daughter with a drug problem. Already having her plane tickets, Hopkins flew to Norman and spoke in that community last night.

I’ve met all three authors, and many more, through the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Obviously, these three were exploring some of our society’s fault lines and tender areas, and that’s made people nervous. But that’s what good authors often do. And even material as seemingly innocuous as Martin Handford’s Where’s Waldo? can produce a challenge (because of this detail in one crowded picture).

All of which is a lead-in to Banned Books Week starting this Saturday, 26 September.

Wedding Crashers in Colorado

Last week I received snapshots of one of my college roommates getting married to his boyfriend of several years in a small ceremony in in San Francisco. They had to travel to California from Illinois because only some states protect any couple's access to marriage. (Congratulations, Charles and Eric!)

On the same day, I received a press release about a challenge to one library's copy of Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen. I learned about this book last year when I introduced Sarah at the first Belmont Children's Picture Book Festival. It's about a little girl (guinea pig) worried that she'll lose the company of her favorite uncle (guinea pig) when he gets married (to another guinea pig).

Because both the guinea pigs getting married wear tuxedos, it's obvious that they're both male. (It's also obvious that tuxedos don't flatter an adult guinea pig's figure. Going in another direction, Charles and Eric appear to have been the most casually dressed people at their own wedding.) And the sight of two males getting married has been enough to produce...two challenges to the Douglas County Libraries, centered in Castle Rock, Colorado.

Librarian Jamie LaRue addressed his patrons' concerns in two thoughtful letters, which he also posted on his blog. The first attracted many comments, most of them complimentary and some not--which LaRue again answered politely and thoughtfully.

LaRue is also author of The New Inquisition, a book for librarians on how to consider and respond to patron challenges like this. Deb Price's column, printed in the Madison, Wisconsin, Capital Times, characterizes LaRue's attitude this way:

Through his decades as a librarian, LaRue has come to believe that censorship attempts are usually rooted in parental grief at the prospect of losing control over their children's world.

Or control over their children an autonomous thinkers.

One of the most vituperative commenters, I see, has been blocked from Wikipedia for incivility, inability to compromise, and creating a "sock puppet" pseudonym. Not surprisingly, his issue then was the same as his issue now: objections to any sign that American society is becoming more open to gay couples.

On LaRue's blog that commenter offered imaginary children's books on marijuana smoking and prostitution as false analogies to Uncle Bobby's Wedding. LaRue's replies were impressive in how well he understood how kids might see those issues if their parents or other beloved relatives were involved. The commenter clearly didn't care about young readers thinking.