A lovely librarian read and enjoyed my first book. She
invited me to visit her school, and recommended it to her English department.
They bought it in bulk .
A teacher who hadn’t read it decided it was suitable as a
reading book for Year 8s. They started to read it.
Then another teacher who also hadn’t read it queried its suitability
for that age group. A literacy expert was consulted. She also hadn’t read it. Nevertheless
she decreed that it was unsuitable for the pupils who were already reading
it. The books were taken away from them.
The librarian continued to champion the
book. She made sure the English department reinstated it, this time for Year
9s, and invited me to visit her school for the second time. There I met
children who had started reading the book in Y8 and then were presented with it
again in Y9. Some of them had finished it in Y8, despite having it taken away
from them. Some of them had read it now they were safely in Y9. All of them
seemed to have enjoyed it. I sold quite a few copies of the sequels as well as
the book itself.
So my book was banned. Sort of banned. Not really banned.
Just delayed. It’s not something I’m making a big fuss about. But I do wish that more teachers - and indeed literacy experts – would read
books. Or reviews. Or consult librarians. Or just read newspapers and think about the world and what message they give when they take a book away from a child who's already started reading it.
5 comments:
The teacher who did read and whose professional opinion was then played with in a tug of war must have felt a bit disconcerted too.
This is very interesting. We read Macbeth at 12 when I was at school. And Merchant of Venice when we were 11. No one thought of banning those...and as you say, knife crime affects very young people.
It's a very good book about something that many young people will come into contact with and it's sad when adults censor reading on a whim. Young people will not stop swearing because they read it in a book - they already know the words and sometimes they will add to a novel's credibility if added naturally to the text to reflect the characters and their lives.
What an interesting experience. And how blinkered of all those so-called experts to ban a book without reading it (although of course, that's the way with all culture). Judy Blume's 'Forever' was banned at our school if we were under 15. Of course we all found ways of getting our hands on it. So what does banning achieve? Only an insatiable desire to get hold of the book! And young people are more sophisticated than we give them credit for - if they didn't enjoy your book they would quickly stop reading it, whatever it was about.
It's tricky balancing sensitivity with maturity, but I say, if you haven't even read the book, how the hell can you know if it's suitable or not? Basic common sense, anyone working with teenagers should surely know that you really need to read the books you're recommending to them first - YA covers so much more than people seem to think it does.
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