I just don't get the mentality of sheltering your children from that kind of thing instead of sitting with them and talking about the issues as they come up. Surely that's a much more sensible approach to parenting. (And I know quite a few of those who have tried to get books banned from schools in NZ and usually they're very sensible people. Alas.)
You'd think so, yes. Of course there is such a thing as age-appropriate books - and I say that as someone perhaps more inclined to find certain things appropriate at a given age than you are - and so it should be asked which libraries those books are banned from, and whether their being present in a library means any child, including young ones, can read them. If the banning of that "Speak" book was just to keep it out of the hands of 8-year olds, well, I haven't read the book, but that might not be so unreasonable. Even the marvelous TKaM might go a bit far for children of that age who are good enough readers to want to try it. I came across Stephen King's review of Order of the Phoenix today, in which he quotes his mother's rule of thumb, which was (paraphrased) that if a child was a good enough reader to read a given book, she saw no reason to forbid that on account of the content; except if she thought it would cause nightmares. I don't know if I'd go as far as that myself.
Are you reading anything special for Banned Books Week?
27/09/2010 07:31:32 PM
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The concept remains very strange to me.
27/09/2010 09:17:53 PM
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Indeed.
27/09/2010 11:44:00 PM
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Re: Indeed.
28/09/2010 12:20:24 AM
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My mother tried to keep me from reading certain books at a young age
28/09/2010 12:57:05 AM
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Let's read Mein Kampf while we're at it! *NM*
27/09/2010 11:37:39 PM
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My Oma has a 1930s copy of Mein Kampf which is bound with pages from the Bible.
27/09/2010 11:42:24 PM
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Re: I'm using my "I read books for me and not for my principles" card.
29/09/2010 09:03:32 PM
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