By PEDRO GONZALEZ
The Mat-Su Borough School District recently moved to pluck certain books from libraries after parents and community members complained about “LGBTQ themes” and sexually explicit content. After some deliberation, a Library Citizens Advisory Committee then recommended that several titles be permanently removed. That triggered a legal battle that brought the American Civil Liberties Union and Northern Justice Project into the fold, which led to a judge ordering all but seven books back onto the shelves.
For many in Mat-Su, this issue is as much about exercising the muscles of citizen governance as it is about shielding kids from obscene material. Obviously, not everyone agrees. On the northern point of Cook Inlet, Wasilla’s only bookstore held an event for “Banned Books Week” in September, where unallowed volumes were made into inanimate martyrs.
The modern notion of “banned books” has always been very silly. These books are not actually suppressed in any meaningful way. If it’s available at your local bookstore or on Amazon, it’s not banned. But that’s also why removing books from school libraries, while in egregious cases warranted and proper, is a little like plugging your fingers in a cracking dam. I believe that if you really want to inoculate your kids from smut, you must sit down and read the good stuff with them.
What gets lost in debates over what is or is not inappropriate for kids is that often the books in question are simply awful, virtually unreadable shlock. These titles are bad on their literary merits, apart from any offending subject matter. However, that only becomes viscerally clear if you’ve developed a sense of what is worthy. Aesthetic revulsion is a self-defense mechanism, one that you can cultivate in your children by introducing them to gems.
Data from The Kids & Family Reading Report shows that 55 percent of children aged zero to five are read books aloud at least five times a week, with 37 percent of them read to daily. These numbers drop precipitously around the time kids start kindergarten. The reason? Most cite the fact that their boys and girls can read on their own by then. But this is precisely when you should engage with them in books that will spark and fortify their imagination and their sense of what is good, true, and beautiful.
One of my personal favorites is D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, a beautifully illustrated compendium of Greek myths. Perseus teaches us to be brave and Bellerophon to use our heads in a jam, but also offers a cautionary tale against hubris. An important lesson for little kids with eyes bigger than their cookie jars.
In Winnie-the-Pooh, we find mirthful lessons about friendship, compassion, and how to overcome fear with bravery. The Velveteen Rabbit tells us that hardships are part of life, but suffering, like storms, will pass. What classics you decide to read and discuss with your kids depends on a number of factors.
I personally cannot wait to dig into The Old Man and the Sea with mine, especially my son. It is a masterwork of narration and a beautiful portrait of manhood: strength, courage, perseverance, and reverence for the natural order of things.
The classics are the best but not the only option available. One of my favorite contemporary offerings is The Handsome Little Cygnet, a short, stunningly illustrated and beautifully written book by Matthew Mehan. It tells the tale of a mother and father swan, bonded for life, and their baby, a sweet little cygnet. He is lured away from his family by the colorful and ultimately destructive distractions of society. Cultural vandalism leaves him sullied. Only by reconnecting with his parents—returning to the natural state of things—can he be made clean and whole again.
You can’t protect your kids from the world forever. But I think you can prepare them against it, arm them with an aesthetic and moral compass. Good books are one way to do that.
Pedro Gonzalez has joined the editorial staff of Must Read Alaska. His work has appeared in The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, and elsewhere.
‘Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage’ by Alfred Lansing is a book that should be read to every child as soon as they reach an age that they can appreciate it. Can’t imagine a kid that grew up with this kind of literature would ever doubt their gender..then again, it IS 2024…
I will add it to the reading list!
Excellent essay–thank you for your comments. I get frustrated by those who claim we are trying to ban books. That term has been thrown around indiscriminately but I don’t think most people understand what true book banning would look like.
Respectfully, any time an item is removed from a place where it is harder for the intended audience to reach it, that is a ban.
Moreover, books do not just appear on library shelves out of thin air. They are curated by professionals who have taken classes in collection development and use evidence-based practices, statistics, and patron requests feedback to provide the information the public wants and needs – with an understanding of the importance to also provide differing points of view on said information.
In order for a work to be obscene, it has to meet the three-prong Miller test, and an important part of that test is that the work *must be considered as a whole*. I can’t tell you how many public meetings I sat through listening to the Merry Band of Book Banners read passages from Identical by Ellen Hopkins – always prefacing that it was a book about identical twins. Had any of them bothered to read the entire book, as they claimed they had, they would have realized it wasn’t about identical twins at all, but a girl who was so hurt by the abuse that she suffered her personality split. I was also at meetings were survivors testified as to the power that book held for them – one nineteen year old girl spoke quite eloquently about how reading that book made her realize that what happened to her was not okay, and it empowered her to tell a trusted adult and get help. While there are those who wish to pretend that abuse doesn’t happen in the world, I would rather work to stop it and one to do that it by understanding how it affects those who are touched by it.
You have to choose to pick up a book, open it, read it, and if you come across something offensive, continue to read it.
And not for nothing, if people are sexually excited reading about a young girl being sexually abused by her father – that is their issue and something that they should seek help for and pray about. That is not a normal reaction to what was read.
Pure coincidence – or maybe not – I read the Book of Greek Myths by D’Aulaire to my kids, too. Partly because when I was a kid I thought it was awesome and I hoped my kids would feel the same, but mostly because as an adult I saw the classic allegory in the stories. They’re not unlike the Christian parables, but with wild and fantastic characters.
And again – no kidding – a couple weeks ago, I asked my son (now a 19-year-old man) if he’d ever read Old Man and the Sea. He hadn’t. I pulled my copy off the shelf and dropped it off to him.
Cheers, Pedro. Fine thoughts, and a good read.
If you want to shield children from immoral people, keep Trump out of the White House
You know Frank, there are far worse people in this world who have absolutely no morality. Take for instance Jeff Epstein and Gislaine Maxwell. Along with Sean Combs and a whole host of degenerate entertainment icons. How come we don’t see you speak out against them, Frank?
Are you even a citizen or just some agent seeking to destabilize our community?
You will have to pay for the karma you accrue. Better start making better choices or they will catch up with you, swiftly.
While I see your point to throwing Trump’s morality in with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell – it seems as if they all ran in the same social circles – only one is running president and being prayed over by religious leaders who have sold their souls (and any human decency) to the devil for a chance at power; claimed a moral high ground why grabbing women’s crotches, or attempted to overthrow the government. Why god-fearing people think Donald Trump is the second coming of Jesus Christ and not the devil in no disguise as he tells us with his own mouth, I’ll never understand. If there is a battle of good and evil, Donald Trump is certainly not a doer of good.
Hey, I’m all for you raising your kid how you want to raise your kid. But leave me to raise my kid how I want to raise my kid. Take your Christian Nationalist views and keep them where they belong, in Church and discussions around the family dinner table as to why you believe what you believe and teach your children how to think critically, and I’ll do the same with mine. Church and state, as long as the Bill of Rights stands, guarantees separation of those two entities. And Jesus was the original proponent of it, saying, “Give to Caser what is Caser’s; give to God what is God’s.” And I would love to know, when, in history has it been the good guys banning books? At least have the courage to call this what it is – an organized attempt to destroy public libraries as the last standing government institution that people trust. If you destabilize that, you crumble the cornerstone of democracy. What’s that saying? Pride comes before the fall? You believe that you have the right to decide what my kid reads? What I read? What information is available in the PUBLIC library, which by definition belongs to EVERYONE and not just people who got to Church? You are in for a mighty long fall….. and at this point, as a public librarian who understands more about serving the public and the greater good than you ever will, and who is tired of being likened to a pedophile, a groomer, or a pusher of sexualized content by people who NEVER EVEN BOTHERED TO SIGN UP FOR A LIBRARY CARD until they decided to challenge books found in the library – and then challenged books that weren’t even on the shelves – and then refused to follow the process outlined in established policy and procedures – and then threw fits when they didn’t get their way and used political allies to create entirely new bureaucratic levels of government which also aren’t giving them what they want and so creating chaos once again – it can’t happen soon enough. But here’s the thing – when it happens, you’ll be ostracized from your Church and your like-minded compadres, but the public library, it will welcome you in with open arms and continue to stand for your right to access the information and the books that you want access to. Ironic, no? You’ll have a place in the thing you are trying to destroy.
Welcome Pedro. I look forward to reading more of your articles.