Who decides what kids can — and can’t — read?

Deeper books trigger tougher battles
That’s what commonly leads educators to waver on how fiercely — or even whether — to defend a book that, as with Mackler’s, nearly everyone agrees is important and worthy.

As authors produce ever more sophisticated books for young readers, the number of parents who are uncomfortable on religious or moral grounds has grown. The American Library Association said it monitored 547 challenges last year, up from 458 in 2003. For every book in its files, four or five others are probably also being challenged in libraries and schools somewhere in America, it said.

For a quarter-century, the ALA has also issued an annual “10 Most Challenged Books” list. Led by “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier, the 10 books cited for 2004 drew complaints over sexual content, offensive language, religious viewpoint and violence, the ALA said.

Mackler said those complaints were just adults talking down to adolescents, who flock to the books and their messages.

“The one thing in this whole banning fiasco is I have been so incredibly moved by the students’ efforts and the petition,” she said. “The students are asking for access to my novel. They’re asking for the right to read as widely as possible. There’s been so much support.”

Acknowledging the parents’ prerogative
The problem for educators, though, is that it’s not enough to say a book should go on the shelves because it’s a good book. Parents object to all kinds of books for all kinds of reasons, and they must be the final arbiters of what their children read, Ecker said, no matter how legitimate their reasons are — or aren’t.

One entry on the ALA’s list of frequently challenged books, the “Captain Underpants” series for elementary school readers by Dav Pilkey, illustrates the difficulty. The books are devoid of sex — indeed, they are devoid of any adult themes at all. They’re simply outrageous (and outrageously illustrated) adventure tales that trade in themes guaranteed to appeal to the youngest readers, with titles like “Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy, Part 2” and “Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants.”

Parents have frequently objected to the books because they’re “gross” and “stupid.” Or, as Pilkey puts it on his Web site, they’re “a monster mashin’, robo-wranglin’, time travelin’, brain-switchin’, nose-pickin’ good time!”

If books like that can create battles, then books like “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things” are guaranteed to start a fight.

“I realize that students can go online, they can see worse things in movies and they can buy the books at the bookstore or on Amazon.com,” Ecker said. “... And yet I don’t think that makes it right to put it in a book that is on the shelves of the media center in a public school where the students have to go.

“What they do on their own time, that’s up to them and their parents.”

Unfortunately, Ecker said, parents too often pay no attention to what their children read, leaving it to educators to make difficult and sometimes unpalatable choices.

Ecker stressed how much he admired “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things,” and he said, “It does have a good message, and if parents would read it with their youngsters, it would be great. (But) too many times, a student will check a book out of the media center and the parent may or may not know it.” 

If nothing else, he said, he hopes the controversy will help parents “realize that they ought to check what their child is reading, whether they get it from the school library or the public library.”

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