I was born in the early 1950’s—known as an era of conformity.
Yet, I was allowed to check out books on the adult floor (with my father’s library card) from middle school onward.
I remember checking out Ralph Ellison’s 1952 book Invisible Man—confusing it with H.G. Well’s science fiction classic—and being so distressed at one scene that I felt the book was burning my hands.
A few years later, I checked out James Joyce’s Ulysses (an under the counter book), and found James Joyce as difficult to comprehend as Ralph Ellison.
Reading books that are “too sophisticated,” doesn’t contaminate children, or make them grow up faster.
When you have no context to understand content, it simply goes over your head.
Your primary beliefs about life are instilled by your parents, and (although neither of my parents graduated from college), my parents always encouraged me to read.
Another book that confused me was our Family Bible.
What could “her flowers be upon him” (Leviticus 15:24) possibly be describing?
Why did men have multiple wives?
Why was it so wrong for a woman to stop two men from fighting by touching a man’s “secrets” (Deuteronomy 25:11)?
What could Ham seeing Noah’s “nakedness” mean?
Actually, I don’t recall asking my parents for answers to these questions.
I was too embarrassed.
During my high school years, our textbooks didn't contain much material about the Reconstruction era, slavery, or even why the U.S. was fighting the Vietnam War.
My high school history department filled in the gaps.
One of my history teachers told us about Ku Klux Klan activity in northwestern Indiana (when he was a child), and lynching.
Another teacher talked about discrimination, and why using derogatory terms for ethnic groups was wrong.
The head of the department explained that the U.S. was fighting the Vietnam War for economic reasons, not just to prevent the spread of communism.
(Thank you, gentlemen of the history department.
You weren’t afraid of doing your jobs, and preparing your students for life.)
The Florida state legislature’s “Stop Woke Act” states that media specialists should avoid any material that may provoke feelings of “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” in children.
However, there’s no accompanying research proving that children experienced guilt after reading Florida textbooks, or that this “distress” would damage children.
Why would learning about discrimination, or Black history, inspire feelings of distress?
Obviously, the Florida law is just a smoke screen for trying to control societal change.
Cover of Grimm's Fairy Tales, published around 1922.
The original children’s stories—fairy tales—were designed to cause some “psychological distress” in children.
In “Hansel and Gretel,” a witch is baked alive in an oven.
In the original ending of “Little Red Riding Hood,” both the grandmother, and the child, are eaten by the wolf.
Until Disney Studios created their versions of “The Little Mermaid,” the mermaid always died at the end.
There’s a long history of using folk and fairy stories to both entertain children, and teach moral lessons.
However, after Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was published in 1963, it took two years before public libraries would place the picture book on their shelves.
Although the book was about children mastering feelings of jealousy and fear, media specialists considered the book too scary for children.
Until the late 1700s, children—poor children, at least—were just considered inexpensive sources of labor.
Then, around 1790, the Romantic movement began, and the Western world began to view children as “pure and untainted beings”—at least those lucky enough to be born in wealthier families.
It’s in this era that brother and sister, Charles and Mary Lamb,* co-authored Tales from Shakespeare (1807). This collection of twenty stories—derived from twenty Shakespeare plays—was intended to be “appropriate for young people.” The first edition sold out, and it’s been in print ever since. Kathy Watson’s biography of Mary Lamb states that when there were plot issues “that might seem indecent for young people, she [Mary] simply changed them.”
(Charles and Mary Lamb never found life partners, and lived in “double singleness” for most of their lives.)
During the early 1800’s (says Kathy Watson), children’s literature was an “interesting battlefield” for “philosophers, churchmen, teachers, and parents.”
It was a battle between “romanticists” (like the Lambs) and “educationalists,” like Sarah Trimmer (editor of The Guardian of Education, a periodical published from 1802-1806).
Trimmer mistrusted fairytales—because they were frightening and worked “too powerfully upon the feelings of the mind.”
This “media specialist” was especially disdainful of “Cinderella,” because that story “encouraged a disturbing love of finery.”
Almost 150 years later, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham (1895-1981) wrote Seduction of the Innocent.
His theory was that seeing violence and sexuality in comic books caused delinquency in children.
(His ideas resulted in the Comics Code Authority.)
I wonder what Dr. Wertham would think of the Disney channel, or the fact that superhero films are the top film franchises worldwide?
Any discussion of censorship wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451—the science fiction classic about people fighting against a totalitarian government, that sets fire to libraries and suppresses ideas.
(The title refers to the temperature at which book paper catches fire.)
A passage reads:
So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality. . .
Those who want to “protect societal values” by not reading books, and those who want to “promote inclusivity” by deleting words from books, are both rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
According to the American Library Association, there were 1,269 demands to censor library books in 2022—the highest number in over 20 years, and nearly double the 2021 demands.
Publishers are changing the word “fat” to “enormous” in Willie Wonka—instead of just adding a good explanation of Roald Dahl’s “world view” in the front matter.
At the same time all this censorship is going on, several states have changed voting laws so less people can vote, and a United Nations report (June 12, 2023) stated that there has been ”no improvement in biases against women in a decade.”
Changing a few words in classic books, and banning “progressive” books, will not create societal change.
In order to make real change, we need to look elsewhere.
*Mary Lamb (1764-1847) suffered from mental illness. In 1796—ten years before she co-wrote Tales from Shakespeare—Mary stabbed her mother to death in a fit of rage. Her brother Charles became her caretaker, and she was his housekeeper, for most of her life. Two biographies—Kathy Watson’s The Devil Kissed Her, and Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s Mad Mary Lamb—tell her story.
