I come from a family of readers – anything and everything. As a child, I wanted to read whatever my Mother was reading. And to their credit, my parents allowed me to read anything that I wanted to.
I can remember numerous movies that I was forbidden from watching due to content, but they never once forbade me from reading a book, regardless of whether it was age-appropriate or not. That is a gift they gave me for which I am grateful.
When I was eight or nine years old, my Mother was reading a book that she had checked out from the local library. Out of curiosity, I picked up the book and began reading it, becoming quite enthralled with it. When she wasn’t reading it, I was. I can still remember the cover of the book just as clearly as if I were holding it in my hands right now. It had a blue border and a black and white portrait of a woman on the front. The book was called “Hour Of Gold, Hour Of Lead: Diaries and Letters Of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1929-1932” and in it the author painstakingly wrote about the kidnapping of her infant son. In retrospect, I’m sure that fascinated me because as a child, who could imagine someone kidnapping another person’s baby. That just seemed unheard of to me at the time.
Without realizing that I had not finished the book, Mother returned it to the library. Upon hearing that I hadn’t finished it and wanted to, she took me to the library and sat in the car while I went inside to check it out. The woman manning the desk would not check the book out to me. When I asked her why, she told me it was because it was too old for me, and I was too young to read it. That didn’t sit well with me at all. Even at the tender age of eight or nine years old, I knew that was wrong. She was an employee of the local library, not the book police. And furthermore, if Linda and Jim didn’t have a problem with me reading the book, then it really should have been no concern of hers. I went to the car and told Mother, and she went inside the library and checked it back out. We returned home and I finished the book.
All these many decades later, that incident still stings. And for those of you longtime locals, no, it was not that precious little librarian Lillian Sewell that we all dearly loved. It was someone else who I will not name here.
My husband also comes from a family of readers and loves reading as much as I do. Since her birth, we have enjoyed sharing our love of reading with our daughter, who we began reading to as soon as she made her entrance in our lives. Our reading to her from an early age resulted in her learning to read much earlier than usual. All these years later, she has quite an extensive library of her own.
We decided early on that we would never turn down her requests for books. Additionally, we have also always allowed her to read anything that she wants to read. Over the years if there was something she wanted to read that she thought might be questionable she would come to us and tell us about it as if seeking permission. There were some TV shows we didn’t want her watching at the time, but I don’t recall a single book that she wanted to read in which we said no.
We love our trips to the bookstore. There’s just nothing like the ambiance. You feel as if you are embarking on an adventure as soon as you open the door. Once we cross the threshold, we all three basically say “see ya” in unison as we each go our separate ways, roaming the stacks in search of new treasures.
Reading truly opens up worlds for people that they cannot imagine. And for what it’s worth, it is a proven fact that readers have much more advanced vocabularies than non-readers, thus tending to excel in school.
This past week was Banned Books Week and this year’s theme was “Freed Between the Lines.” Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores and schools.
The annual event highlights the value of free and open access to information and brings together the entire book community in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas. By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.
I truly believe that it is every parent’s prerogative to determine what their own child reads or doesn’t read. Having said that, however, I also believe it is no one else’s business.
If there is a book you don’t want to read, then don’t read it. If there is a book you don’t want your child to read, then so be it. That’s your right. But that’s where it should end. Just because you may not approve of a book doesn’t mean that no one else should be able to read it. People should read what they want. When someone wants a book banned, then all that does is provide more motivation – especially to our youth – to read the book.
