The American Library Association recently released their annual list of the top 10 most-challenged books. Take a look at the list HERE. This got me thinking about the kind of material I, personally, was reading in my formative years that would have caused my parents concern. Then, I got curious and asked library staff to tell me about the Forbidden Books and media from their own childhoods.
Below, I listed the responses from my coworkers by category with a little added commentary by yours truly. Names changed to protect the innocent. Most of the materials listed are available in the Monarch catalog if anyone wants to learn what all the fuss is about. Did you read any books in secret when you were a kid? I’d love to know what they were.
First Category: SEX
A good portion of the off-limits materials my coworkers responded with was due to explicit depictions of a sexual nature. I will never forgive the Puritans for infecting this land with aversion to frippery, be it a ruffled petticoat, or a consensual roll in the hay.
Co-worker A: “I should not have been reading The Symphony of Ages* by Elizabeth Haydon in 7/8th grade. Great action fantasy with lots of graphic sex scenes. Mom’s policy was that she trusted my judgement and as long as I was reading I could read what I wanted.”
*Book one of this nine-part series is titled Rhapsody: Child of Blood (1999). And I must say, bravo mom. I wish more parents held this attitude. I knew a school librarian who really hated Captain Underpants, and I just couldn’t understand why she would hate something that got kids into reading.
Co-worker B: “Flowers in the Attic* was still a thing when I was a kid. And of course a bunch of my friends weren’t allowed to read Harry Potter because of the witchcraft. Clan of the Cave Bear+ by Auel which has a whole bunch of rape in it … but it sounded cool and historical and maybe a bit magical, which were the things that counted when I read the blurb in middle school.”
*there is a LOT of VC Andrews in the Monarch catalog as you can see HERE.
+this is the first book in the six-book Earth’s Children series by Jean M. Auel. VC and Jean ruled in the 80s. They were everywhere for years.
Co-worker C: “TTYL and TTFN* by Lauren Myracle! I don’t think they’re edgy for adults but I learned a lot about uhhh…boys….Also The Clique series would have some interesting, juicy bits that I know my mom wouldn’t let me read/think about. The fact that I can’t type what content they had probably is also an indicator!”
*these series were aimed at teen readers and debuted in 2004. I wonder if they hold up or not, and if mom and dad would approve.
Co-worker D: “Maybe kind of a weird one, but I was super into the Godchild manga series by Kaori Yuki as a teenager, was flipping through the next volume in the bookstore and my Dad looked over my shoulder on a page where the angsty brooding protagonist was very shirtless. I put it away quickly and claimed I was ‘just browsing’, don’t think he ever figured out he’d bought me some of that very series for prior birthdays.”
*while I appreciate that manga can and does get extreme with depictions of sex and violence, and parents should probably be taking a general interest in the books their children consume, I just can’t get worked up about what’s going on in manga when most households have access to the cesspool that is the World Wide Web.
Second Category: DRUGS
What are you, some kind of SQUARE? Actually, there weren’t too many Forbidden Books with drugs central to a salacious plot in this list. Young adult books depicting drugs and drug use were usually of the cautionary tale variety.
Co-worker E: “We passed around a dog-eared copy of Go Ask Alice in the fourth grade and acted like it was contraband on account of sex AND drug use. I remember being truly dismayed to learn this book was authored by a concerned mother as her way of warning the youth against cool things like sex and drugs* and that it was not a true first-hand account running afoul of hippies like I originally believed.”
*we here at Mead Library do not think drugs are very cool. Sex is cool with enthusiastic consent, tho. Please do not ask any of us out, however.
Co-worker F: “Sweet Valley High* series that I found at St. Vincent De Paul when I was 12.”
*these books are really quite wholesome and I just think I am soooo funny to list them in the DRUGS category. My sister had a steamer trunk full of Sweet Valley High and Nancy Drew courtesy of my mother, who worked at Walden Books in the 1980s.
Third Category: VIOLENCE
Most of the books I read these days would fall into the VIOLENCE category if one needed to categorize, on account of I mostly only read murder mysteries and MurderBot. I therefore consider the VIOLENCE category to be the superior one for this arbitrary reason.
Co-worker G: “Anything by Stephen King*. Though it was hard not to, when the books were my mom’s.”
*The work of Stephen King has been creating lifelong readers since the 1970s. Ask your friends what was the first “adult” novel they read, and I bet a notable ratio will say “King”.
Fourth Category: ROCK N ROLL
This is the catch-all category for things that didn’t fit nicely elsewhere, but witches and vampires were for sure giving parents fits for awhile there.
Co-worker H: “Twilight* as a 3rd/4th grader. I just wanted to read about cool vampires and a scandalous love triangle!! But there were things in there I probably should not have read haha.”
*are we ever really young if we don’t read questionable things?
Co-worker I: “Wicked at 13/14 – a lot of the politics and the night club scene went over my head. My sister read it after me, and she’s two years younger. My mom asked me after my sister had started to read it if my sister should be reading it, and I said definitely not.”
Co-worker J: “I could read/watch nearly anything*. The only forbidden entertainment was Married with Children.”
*I once visited friends in Nashville and their 11 year-olds could watch Teen Titans but not Spongebob. I asked why so, and the mother said it was because Spongebob was “too weird”. Not being a parent my own self, I don’t think I will ever grasp the caprices of parental censorship.
Were there any books, movies, music, or television off-limits in your household? Here are some things that my older sister owned in the 1980s and early 90s when we were still fully school children: 2 Live Crew As Nasty as They Wanna Be (take that, Tipper Gore); Andrew Dice Clay live in concert bootlegs; Eddie Murphy Raw on cassette tape; Blood Sugar Sex Magic by The Red Hot Chili Peppers (double take that, Tipper Gore), and Ritual De Lo Habitual by Jane’s Addiction (TRIPLE TAKE THAT, Tipper Gore). Our lovely parents trusted us to engage with appropriate media, and for the most part, we did. My wish is that more parents would raise children confident enough to seek out the media they love, with no worries about judgement or censorship from loved ones.
After all is said and done, it’s really important to understand what is going on when someone challenges a book. Read more about it HERE on the American Library Association webpage. My belief is that many parents are projecting their anxiety onto children’s lit and using book challenges as a means of feeling in control. Many challenges come from parents who have children transitioning out of kindergarten, or grade school, or junior high, and while one cannot stop the progress of time, a book challenge seems like a concrete action someone can take in the name of “protecting the children”. It is not my intention to be flippant, and apologies if I have come across in this way, but book challenges are such a sore spot in the public and school library landscape at this moment that if I don’t laugh I’ll have to cry.
Anyhoo, please consider using the Your Next Five Books tool if you are casting around for something great to read. Or, use the Your Next Five Movies tool if you are a-hankering for something great to watch.
Mead Public Library Blog 