Bookish News

There's lots going on in the book world.  Here are a few of the recent stories that have caught my eye...

• Around the world, but especially here in the US, we are mourning the loss of one of our society's most well loved poets, Maya Angelou.  Author of 7 autobiographies (including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) and multiple collections of essays and poems, she was also a civil rights leader, a journalist, and a professor.  Tributes continue to pour in and her loss will be felt by many.  “No sun outlasts its sunset but will rise again and bring the dawn.”
•  Actor LeVar Burton has started a Kickstarter campaign to bring his long-running children's show Reading Rainbow back for a new generation.  The idea is to put Reading Rainbow on the web and make it free and accessible to children and classrooms all over.  As someone who grew up watching this show and learning so much from it, I am so excited to see it being brought back.  Visit his campaign page to contribute.
• Though it has been finished since 1926, J. R. R. Tolkien's translation of Beowulf is only now available for readers.  Unlike other translations, it is in prose form.  Let the comparisons to Heaney's translation begin!
• UK Education Secretary Michael Gove recently announced his decision to remove American classics like Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird from the list of required reading for British students.  Mr. Gove contends that there should be more emphasis on British classics saying "I want pupils to grow up able to empathise with Jane Eyre as well as Lennie, to admire Elizabeth Bennet as much as Scout Finch."  My first thought is that some people are taking the criticism too far.  This is hardly a "ban" on American books.  However, I do feel that dividing literature into nationalistic categories may not be the best idea.  Great literature doesn't speak just to a specific nation, time, or society, but rather to the human condition as a whole.  I'd be interested to hear what British readers think of this.

Got any thoughts on the above stories?  Have any other bookish news stories?  Share in the comments!

Never Ban Books...Except That One

Here in the US we recently "celebrated" Banned Books Week.  Readers, bloggers, and news organizations have worked to bring awareness to books that have been banned by schools, libraries, and bookstores throughout the country.  The American Library Association reports that there were 464 incidents of a book being challenged or banned in the US last year.  These books have ranged from children's books like And Tango Makes Three to best-sellers like Fifty Shades of Grey to classics like To Kill A Mockingbird.  Everyone who participated spoke out against censorship and the right to read whatever one chooses.

However, the following week a new story surfaced that changed the tone of the argument and revealed a certain level of hypocrisy that exists in the reading community.  While in a bookstore, an 8 year old girl came across a set of books that she and her mother found to be offensive and sexist (basically two "survival guides", one for boys that focused on outdoor stuff and one for girls that focused on relationships and and fashion).  The girl become visibly upset and when a store clerk found out what was wrong, they decided to remove the books from the shelves.

“After looking through the books, the employee agreed they were offensive and pulled them from the shelves! She said if she had seen them first they wouldn’t have been there to begin with. She was great because she took action and validated my daughter’s feelings.”

Most news organizations and bloggers found the story to be wonderful and praised both the girl and the store for taking action.    Now, no matter what my personal feelings on these particular books may be, I feel this story and the reaction it has gotten to be hypocritical.  We just finished speaking out against censorship and limiting access to books.  We said that books should not be removed from store shelves, libraries, and schools because of the personal feelings of a few people.  And yet, that is exactly what happened here.  A few people removed books that they personally found offensive rather than allow the rest of us to make that decision for ourselves.

If we are going to speak out against banning books, then we need to be against banning ALL books.  That  means even those that we find to be racist, politically incorrect, offensive, and inappropriate.  I am glad that this young girl has been taught to voice her opinion and stand up for her beliefs.  But I am also afraid that this has only served to teach her that her opinion is the only one that matters.    

Banned Books Week 2010

September 25-October 2 are the dates of this year's Banned Books Week sponsored by the American Library Association. This week is meant to bring awareness to the many books that are challenged throughout the world. Most of the time, these challenges involve parents wanting certain books removed from school libraries. In 2009 there were 460 attempts to have a book withdrawn from a US classroom or library. While our neighbors across the pond don't seem to have this problem, it has become very common here in the US. Most of the time, the reasons given for the desire to ban a book are centered around a child's well-being. The parent wishes to shield their child from sexually explicit, racially charged, or extremely violent content. This is understandable and in many ways commendable, but it is not exactly possible. Here are some of my thoughts on banned books:

• Ultimately, it all comes down to free speech. We, as Americans and humans, have the right to read (or write) whatever we wish, and we have the right to NOT read whatever we wish. If you don't agree with the content found in the book, put it down. I have stopped reading numerous books because I found the content distasteful.
• Your idea offensive and my idea of offensive are not always the same. While I'm not surprised to see certain books on the list of often banned books (The Catcher in the Rye, Lolita, or anything by D. H. Lawrence), there were others that caught me off guard and left me scratching my head in wonder (To Kill a Mockingbird? Gone With the Wind? The Lord of the Rings?). I would hate for someone to come up to me and tell me that I can't read a certain book because they find it offensive.
• You are the parent. If you are concerned about what your children are reading, monitor it, talk to them about it, or discuss it with their teachers. There may be a way to work out your differences of opinion on what should and should not be read in the classroom...
• ...or maybe not. If you can't work any of that out with the school, you can always do what my parents decided to do. Homeschool. By sending your kids to public school, you are giving up some of your basic parental rights (schools can't cater to each parent's beliefs and standards), so if you want all of those rights back, you may have no other choice but to take your child's education into your own hands.

Ultimately, banning books does nothing to solve a problem. If anything it makes the problem worse. If people cannot read, learn, and decide for themselves, then a nation is sure to fall under tyranny (Nazis or Communism, anyone?). How about you? What are your thoughts on banned books? Is there ever a circumstnace when a book should be banned?