I personally think that pretty much everything is too dangerous for children, but somehow they have to grow into adults. It’s a miracle.

In reading the news on a daily basis, a recurring theme over the past couple of years has been the attempt to prevent school-aged children from reading books. According to PEN America, a literacy advocacy group, since the fall of 2021 almost 6,000 books have been banned in American schools. It’s an epidemic. In some schools in Florida, for example, the entire school library and all classrooms have had every book removed, with individual books reinstated only after a committee has read and reviewed each one for “suitability” and returned it. This process can take years, assuming that it ever puts most of them back.

This, of course, got me to thinking: if these books are so dangerous and powerful, then perhaps I should go take them out of the library and read them myself. And so was born a personal project.

In future blog posts, I will provide my book reviews of the ones that I read. I plan to select the ones most frequently banned, or that represent unique forms of evil should they seep into the impressionable minds our American future citizens. Or, maybe I’ll pick some that just sound fun to read.

I started with Gender Queer because there was a news story about the author, Maia Kobabe, attending a school board meeting where banning the book was on the agenda.

The American Library Association provides a map on their web site showing the most frequently challenged books in each state. New Jersey (where I live): Gender Queer. Texas and Florida (the states that win the contest of challenging the most books): The Bluest Eye. Ohio: It’s Perfectly Normal. I started with these, and also added two more to my list that have been challenged: The Handmaid’s Tale and Between the World and Me. More will be added as time goes on, I’m sure. These cover the most frequently banned topics of sex, race relations, and LGBTQ+ issues. (The LGBTQ+ ones are really about sex, so I guess Americans are focused on it.)

In Utah, the Bible was officially challenged. I have already read this one, so I am not going to go back to read it again as part of this project. I can understand why it might be banned; there are all sorts of corrupting ideas in it, like sex, murder, treachery, adultery, slavery, slaughtering women and children, and so on. Not to mention a future apocalypse that scares the pants off me, so I can’t imagine what a young mind would think of it.

To illustrate with a Bible story, Adam and Eve are the only people on earth, and they then have two sons. Then one of the sons has sex with his wife for the purpose of procreation; wouldn’t she have to have been his sister? Ewww. Feel free to come up with a better example if you don’t like that one, but it has the virtue of being right at the start of the whole book. Did I mention the part where they talk about Noah being drunk and naked in front of his kids?

Sorry, I was just kidding about thinking that the Bible should be banned, of course it should be part of American children’s literacy education! Although I wasn’t kidding about the challenge in Utah, which really did happen.

In any event, stay tuned for my next post where I will report back on reading a banned book. Wish me luck.