Archive for October, 2010

Banned Books: The Bermudez Triangle

Title: The Bermudez Triangle
Author: Maureen Johnson
Challenged in: Leesburg, Fl Public Library
For: “sexual innuendo, drug references, and other adult topics”

So I definitely read this book a little more than a year ago because I like other things Maureen Johnson has written. I was going to just write a blog post on it without rereading it, since I was 99% sure I knew exactly why it was being banned. Then I read the brief description on the challenged book list, got really confused by the “drug references”, and decided to bite the bullet and read it again, scouring it for the part that had escaped my memory where the three main characters (or anyone) does meth or at least talks about getting high. The good news is, my memory is actually pretty good; the only “drug reference” I could find in The Bermudez Triangle is that one of the main character’s smokes, although her friends are always trying to get her to stop. The idea that some impressionable teen girl would start smoking because of this book is pretty hilarious. The main characters also attend two parties with alcohol, although no one seems to really get drunk.

Here’s the scoop:
Nina, Avery, and Mel have been BFF forever, nicknamed The Bermudez Triangle (Bermudez is Nina’s last name) by some jealous girl that wanted into their private clique. Nina is the smart, organized, perfectionist one. Avery is the free-spirit, tough girl musician. Mel is the shy, girly one. Then Nina goes to some kind of Smart Kid Camp over the summer and falls in love with Jeremy Caves and Mel figures out that she’s gay, accidentally kisses Avery, and they start secretly dating. Natch this makes things totally awk when Nina comes back, especially after Avery decides she’s not actually gay and breaks up with Mel, Jeremy Caves cheats on Nina, and Mel’s mom finds out she’s gay and stops speaking to her. Luckily, through the power of friendship and with the help of a cute, funny guy named Parker who sadly–and kind of unfairly–never manages to get any girl, they pull through and Triangle Power lives again.

So, yeah, this book was fairly typical Three Best Friends Whose Friendship is Tested By Dating/Boys/The World, except for the whole lesbian thing, which was handled pretty tastefully. Avery and Mel kiss sometimes, and there are oblique references to “…. things.” but that’s about it. So, yes, the sexual content is about as in-your-face as drug references that are actually smoking. Seriously, Leesburg, I can totally hook you up with some YA Lit that ACTUALLY CONTAINS the things you are complaining about if you want to challenge something for real real next year. You know this and Only In Your Dreams is not the best you can do. Step it up.

Zombies vs. Unicorns: An Age Old Dispute

I feel like this book misled me, which is a shame because I was so sure there was no way it could be anything less than totally awesome. Here’s the cover:

Zombies vs. Unicorns


But what I first saw was the spine with ZOMBIES VS. UNICORNS glaring at me from across the library. Of course I’m going to check that out, it’s not even a question.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Wait, no, I do; I was expecting zombies and unicorns battling to the death with humans looking on as the unlucky, occasionally gored/eaten bystanders. Then I realized it was a book of short stories edited by Holly Black (Team Unicorn) and Justine Larbalestier (Team Zombie). The stories are either about zombies or about unicorns (except for Garth Nix, who has both, which does not surprise me–you know he can’t get away from dead things–but they don’t even fight, so it doesn’t count). At first, I was impressed by the veritable YA lit author powerhouse they had assembled. The list includes: Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Carrie Ryan among others. But not even this could placate me for long about the total lack of zombie-on-unicorn action.

Also, admittedly, I have pretty high standards. Especially where zombies are concerned, being basically a Max Brooks-approved expert on the subject. Some of the stories were about the annoying, fluffy zombies who don’t try to kill people and mostly just make brain jokes and fall in love, clearly trying to lull us into a false sense of security for the impending zombocalypse. I disapprove in the strongest possible terms. In general, I also like unicorns to be ruthless, killing machines since–come on–they have a huge freaking weapon on their heads. If I had a horn, I would totally use it to maul people until they did my bidding.

I did kind of like Meg Cabot’s unicorn, clearly a parody, which farted a delicate floral scent and was named Princess Prettypants, and Naomi Novik’s, a shifty New York unicorn who doesn’t exactly play by the Unicorn Rulebook but, damn it, he gets results. On the zombie side, Carrie Ryan wrote an awesome, kickass-girl story in her Forest of Hands and Teeth universe, which I am already a fan of, and Scott Westerfeld went with the interesting idea of showing what teens growing up in a post-zombocaylpse world would do to be cool and distance themselves from the lame adults in their lives (hint: zombie virus is the drug of choice).

All these good points aside, I cannot get behind a book called Zombies vs. Unicorns that does not actually have zombies-fighting-unicorns action. I think it would look something like this:


I knew this was a bad idea the minute Francois was run through. As I watched that sharp, shimmering horn slide through his chest, I realized we probably should have never left the mall. Sure, I was sick of that fake muzak we couldn’t figure out how to turn off, and another gang of bikers was due to break in any day, but at least we were safe. I mean, besides the hordes of undead outside, clawing at the windows and moaning for our flesh, but that’s a given anywhere these days. The unicorns, though, they never try to get indoors. Not when there’s so much fresh meat outside.

Well, relatively fresh. Unicorns, for all their sparkly mystical powers, are not known for their discriminating tastes. Flesh-hungry zombie or scared-shitless human; they don’t really care which, it’s what’s for dinner. In fact, there’s been talk that they like humans even more because they usually have to chase us down first, and you know how they love showing off their billowy, glistening mane, bonus points if it catches the light of the full moon. Although that may have been just talk.

Still, after the unicorn that had gored Francois was busy licking up his blood, I climbed a tree. Unicorns can’t climb trees, right? I was less sure of myself when a few more showed up. Could unicorns fly? I knew they weren’t technically magic, having been created by our crack team of scientists to save humanity from the zombie horde, but, since THAT hadn’t turned out according to plan, I wondered what else was wrong. I tried to stay still, but they could probably smell me.

Luckily, at that moment, a faint moan wafted towards us on the breeze. The unicorns all perked up their ears, noses wet with Francois’ blood. Yes! I thought. Zombies! Maybe they’d followed us from the mall, or maybe they’d just caught my scent, or the scent of Francois’ unrecognizable corpse. Either way, maybe it would prove enough of a distraction to the unicorns that I could get away. Zombies were easy prey–but nothing about me has ever been easy.

Whenever I write example story-excerpts I like to give everyone French names because I think it makes everything sound more like a bad historical romance novel. The main character is called Antoinette.

Noted expert Rob McAuliffe actually included a zombies/unicorns link in the brilliant final he wrote for WIESS 101: Zombies in Fiction and Film, which is still on my desktop because reading it makes me happy. Since it includes such biting social commentary (read: is about real people at Wiess) I probably should not reproduce it in full (since Charles Lena would get pissed that his careful preparations do not, in fact, render him MVP). Here is the relevant excerpt from the end, however, when Rob and I are the only ones left alive from our class:

I begin to again crumple into a ball on the floor and prepare to die. Patricia tells me to get up, because she has one last plan. It, however, was going to require a great sacrifice, our soft hair. She explains that zombies could not possibly withstand our soft hair, and once we touch them with it they will turn into unicorns. We run back to Wiess shaking our hair at zombies along the way, filling the campus with bright sparkly pink unicorns. When we get back we cut off our hair and give it to the rest of the survivors. We are able to run around campus turning all of the zombies to unicorns. Unfortunately, unicorns it turns out also have a taste for human brains, and we are all eaten. (McAuliffe, R. 2007)

In conclusion, Rob and I totally could have written this book.

How I Met Steven Wiggins

When people ask me how Steven and I met, I explain what Screw Yer Roommate is1. Naturally since they haven’t experienced it for themselves, they have a hard time understanding how much of a non-date the setup is supposed to be. I really miss Rice sometimes just for the shock value, which usually happened like this:

Someone: How did you meet?
Me: Screw Date.
Someone: OMG WTF?

That never happens anymore. When I mentioned this disparity on facebook, Katelyn Willis pointed out to me that I am, in fact, a liar. My fun story about meeting on Screw Date is misrepresenting the facts.

The facts are these:
The very first time I saw Steven Wiggins was around 2:15pm, August 23, 2005, the Tuesday of the first week of classes, my freshman year and Steven’s first year as a transfer student. It was on a bench outside a second floor classroom in Rayzor Hall. I was pretending to read a book while peering sideways at the person next to me, who was apparently wearing cowboy boots. This was pretty exciting, because I had not expected Texas to really conform to Texas stereotypes at all, and was hoping that this cowboy boot appearance would prove me wrong and I would get to ride a horse or at least save the day with lasso tricks. I assumed that I would learn lasso tricks.

The first words he ever spoke to me were:

“Waiting for Classical Mythology?”

He claims to not remember this at all, and asks how I know that I didn’t talk first. Easy: Freshman Patricia hid her almost crushing shyness with an equally impenetrable barrier of nonchalance. And neither of those warranted talking to Cowboy Boots Guy. I don’t remember what else we talked about, probably because I only asked him questions, so he did most of the talking. I learned that he was a junior transfer from some college I’d never heard of and that he was a classics major. Later, when Rachel, who was in the same class, said, “Have you noticed that weird guy who always wears cowboy boots and that huge leather jacket?” I was able to respond definitively with “His name is Steven Wiggins, and he is maybe some kind of Dickens character gone Texan.”

I really can’t remember distinctly another time I spoke to Steven Wiggins, although Rachel and I did enough gossiping about him. Because, let’s face it, Classical Mythology was an oddly boring class. Each day we would set the chairs up in a circle, and then go around the room and each make some point about the reading. Usually, there were about five points you could intelligently make about the reading, which was hardly ever a full chapter even. Then the following comments would devolve into odd “connection” stories about people’s personal lives, movies they’d seen, or anime they’d written themselves. Gradually Rachel and I began to give everyone nicknames, mostly based upon whatever gimmick they habitually used to get their obligatory comment in. There was Manga Girl, My Boyfriend’s Mom Girl, The Author is Always Wrong Regardless Girl, and References Obscure Things No One Else Has Read Guy. When this got boring we would try to decide which god or goddess each person in the class was, and then which part of their body was the prettiest2.

Throughout all of this Steven Wiggins was mostly just Steven Wiggins, or sometimes Steven Wiggins, Esquire, I think because we couldn’t come up with an identity for him that was more ridiculous than the one he projected, which was something like the Great Gatsby. Some of the “Steven Wiggins quotes” I wrote down in my notes (since, let’s face it, I was not actually taking any notes) included: “Men are attracted to blondes because it’s a bright color; we like shiny things.” and “It’s like the difference between apertifs and before dinner drinks.”3 We would sometimes joke about him outside of class as we did about other people in the class to whom we’d assigned nicknames and rich yet fictitious backstories. I still can’t remember ever talking to him besides that first day.

And so, about a year after I had been eying his cowboy boots, I decided that the most ridiculous person to set Rachel up on Screw Date with–we were going for As Ridic As Possible that year–was Steven Wiggins. We hadn’t seen him since the last day of Classical Mythology, didn’t know where he lived, or how this could be set up, but I joked about doing it occasionally in the beginning weeks of school. That’s when Rachel, crafty as she is, took matters into her own hands, called his cellphone number which she found on facebook, and set him up as a date for me. A masterly preemptive strike. She had to explain what Screw Date was to him, being Deep OC4, but it didn’t matter because someone was going on Screw Date with him, which would certainly afford numerous hilarious stories to be recounted afterwards.

Which led to this:

Screw Date '06. Steven will never know if I agreed to a second date solely because of the awesomeness of his pirate costume.

And gradually this:

November 1st, 2008: So engaged right now!

And in about a year5 it will lead to us getting married (sorry, no picture of that yet) in an awesome costumed Halloween way!

So when people ask me how Steven and I met, I don’t really feel like I’m lying when I talk about Screw Date. Here are my three reasons:

1) It’s a better story!
2) I’m such a pathological liar that I don’t notice when I’m doing it anymore.
3) I really don’t feel like I met Steven until then. Or maybe even after then. Even though I could recognize him on sight after that first day of Classical Mythology, I really don’t think I met him–the real him, not some boredom-induced, literary characteresque construct or the equally as pervasive Steven Wiggins-fabricated social identity, until much later, maybe even after Screw Date. I guess it gets down to your definition of the word “met”. If it’s The Exact Moment I First Saw Steven Wiggins (or, at any rate, his shoes), it would have to be 2:15pm on August 23rd, 2005. If it’s when I feel like I “met” him, met who he actually is, when everything began, then it would have to be Screw Date, or probably even later. I guess this gets into my own personal views about this difference between knowing someone and meeting them, or knowing who someone is on a basic identification level and knowing who someone is on a more personal level.

Okay, laugh, because yeah that sounds dumb and sort of weirdly metaphysical. I guess I’m just sensitive to the dichotomy of a public social persona/true personality and the convoluted interplay between the two. I don’t think I’m like this particularly anymore, but in the past I know I’ve been fairly close to people who, in reality, have known absolutely nothing about me. My fault for being guarded, masking shyness with almost excruciating nonchalance? Their fault for not caring enough to ask? Probably both. Everyone wears these personae to a greater or lesser extent, and I think Steven Wiggins, Esq., whom I certainly met at 2:15pm on August 23, 2005, was just a form of one. The real Steven Wiggins? I saw a few glimpses of him on Screw Date–he actually threw up in a bush around 1am from–and I quote–“not drinking enough Coke” (I know, auspicious, right?). But that’s the fun of a relationship, isn’t it? Taking the time and effort to figure that out.

Anyway, it’s my story, and I’ll tell it how I want.


  • 1Screw Yer Roommate is a Rice tradition where you set your roommate up with a blind date by contacting the prospective date’s roommate, a process made significantly harder now that facebook does not list dorm room number (I am told). The trick is that each date has a gimmick to find each other amongst the masses of people also trying to find their dates in the quad. One year Rachel and a slice of bread with peanut butter on it and had to seek the jelly half of the PB&J. Freshmen year we made Maggie play Marco Polo with her blind date (blindfolded in the quad–not for the faint of heart). Naturally there are usually a lot of cowboys.
  • 2This led to the creation of the nickname “Ben with Nice Ankles” mostly at Rachel’s insistence, since I am generally not a big noticer of ankles for whatever reason. Two years later, when I met this person again in another context, I helplessly blurted out “You’re Ben! You have Nice Ankles!” to his confusion.
  • 3What IS the difference, Steven Wiggins?
  • 4Deep OC=living extremely off-campus
  • 5October 29, 2011 to be exact

Banned Books: How to Get Suspended and Influence People

Title: How to Get Suspended and Influence People
Author: Adam Selzer
Challenged in: Nampa, Idaho Public Library
For: having an abstract drawing of a nude woman on the front cover, having profanity on the back cover

I have been following an unconscious pattern while reading these banned and challenged books. For the most part, I’ve completely forgotten their entires on the 2009-2010 Challenged Books List by the time my library requests come in, so I spend a short amount of time at the beginning of the book trying to guess what it was challenged for. Usually, this is extremely easy. Not so with How to Get Suspended and Influence People. At various points in the book I vaguely hypothesized that the challenge might be about 1) satanism, 2) insubordination to authority figures1, 3) making fun of religion, or 4) discussion of masturbation. Until about three-fourths of the way through, all of these ideas seemed so vague and unfounded2 that I had to stop myself from going to look up the Offensive Immoral Thing I Should Be Looking for. Then, after finishing the book, I was pretty convinced it was the masturbation issue, especially since the act of talking about it was also challenged within the story itself. Turns out, all of these were wrong!

An appalled parent complained about this book for the “nude woman” on the cover. Here is the cover (avert thy eyes, abstract minors!):

She's in the upper right, if you're confused

So shocking right now! The parent also complained about profanity on the back cover, which I will reproduce below in its entirety:

You don’t have to be smart to be a smart-ass. But it helps.

That’s it. I’m fairly certain Appalled Parent picked this up off the shelves and never read it, because there are definitely better things to be offended by within (including better profanity).

This is a fairly light story about the beginning of eighth grade for Gifted student Leon Noside Harris. Peopled with a lightly eccentric supporting cast3, Leon spends most of his time listening to heavy metal music, making snarky and vaguely elitist remarks, and trying to drive his teacher’s a little bit crazy. So like every middle schooler. Then as a project each student in one of his gifted classes has to make an informational video to be shown to the sixth and seventh graders, and he picks sex ed. Randomly deciding to make it “avant-garde” and artistic, most of the film is famous nude paintings from Days of Yore narrated with a poem about how the feelings that puberty brings are Normal. Then one of his teacher’s freaks out that it’s inappropriate, and there’s debate both ways without getting too unrealistic or out-of-control. I actually think this might be an interesting book to read with eighth graders to talk about censorship, and who gets to decide what is and is not appropriate in schools.

But, yeah, the cover: totally raunchy.


1I’ve actually heard of the Harry Potter series being challenged for this reason!

2Not that bans or challenges need be particularly founded. I refer you to the dictionary incident.

3His father middle-named him “Noside” because it’s “Edison” spelled backwards; he hates Thomas Edison for being a jerk, under this naming convention my kid’s middle name will be Loohcs Darg

Firelight: In Twilight They Cashed In

I cannot even begin to express to you how I felt when I first saw this book. First there’s the cover:

Not gonna lie: I judge books by these all the time

Not quite Twilight-style-random-thing-on-black, but close. Then there’s the title. Firelight! It’s like Sophie Jordan isn’t even trying to disguise her main motivation for writing this book. Her notes probably look like this clever two step process that I myself have written down many times while trying to plot a plan for my future:

1) Copy Stephenie Meyer
2) RICHES

Because, let’s face it, if SMeyer can do it, anyone can. She has rejuvenated my cynical lack-of-faith in the publishing industry, and in society in general. Anytime anyone starts grumbling about how they can’t succeed in life because of some kind of drawback they can’t overcome (socio-economic status, fashion sense, a basic understanding of English grammar) I will now say “NO, turn that frown upside down, because you too can be a world famous millionaire author! Look at Stephenie Meyer!” It really has given me hope.

So, anyway, I am basically in love with Sophie Jordan for at least attempting to follow through on my so-far-unattempted life plan, AND by including people who can turn into dragons (or dragons who can turn into people?) while doing so. I will never get tired of anthropomorphic dragons. NEVER.

Before the amazing Twilight tribute fanfic that is Firelight, Sophie Jordan was best known for her many bestselling paranormal and historical romances. My personal favorite (based on the cover and title alone) is one called In Scandal They Wed. I kind of wish her first YA title had followed a similar theme and gone with something more like In melodrama they drowned or In Twilight they tried to cash in. These are mere details however, that can’t detract from the amazingness that is Firelight. It’s almost like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus but in book form. And about teen girl dragons instead of slutty scientists. And takes place in a high school instead of under the sea. So not really alike at all, except they both made me realize that to be a success I need to concentrate less on skill and talent and being good at things and more on writing scripts so bad they are amazing. Here is the amazing plot of amazingness:

Jacinda (yes, JACINDA, contain yourselves) lives in a tribe of draki, people who have somehow descended from dragons. They can take human form and some of them have magical powers, but their numbers are dwindling from hunters and inbreeding. Jacinda is super special because she can breathe fire, and they basically plan to use her to breed more Special Fire Breathing Dragons. Her mother decides to save her from this fate by running away with her and her twin sister. Mom Dragonless hopes that living in a desert will kill Jacinda’s draki self, but Jacinda is filled with righteous rebellion and vows to try to keep it alive. Then she meets a mysterious boy at school who she is wildly, suddenly, crazy in love with, only he happens to be part of the very family of murderous dragon hunters who killed her father! Drama ensues! But mostly just lots of “shuddering breaths” and gazing. You know you love it.

If I had the time or inclination, I could make an awesome comparison chart and show which Firelight characters and scenes correspond to which scenes in Twilight. Oh wait, grad school work is boring. Here you go:

Thirteen Signs that the Book you are reading is, in fact, Twilight
1. Secret Mythical Creature: Check, although it is dragon/dragon hunter, instead of vampire
2. Secret Mythical Creature Kind of Lamer than usual and given weird sparkly attributes: Check, draki are kind of smaller, scrawnier dragons who mostly don’t breathe fire, and have purple iridescent blood, as is stated over and over
3. Love at first sight: Check, Will first sees her in her dragon form but still thinks she’s hot
4. Star-crossed lovers: Dragon Hunter Guy angrily groans that “This is impossible… A hunter in love with his prey”. Sound familiar?
5. Over-described hot guy: “the grooves along his cheekbones deepening”
6. Guy who is “too dangerous” and tells girl to stay away from him repeatedly: Check, “I guess you should stay away from me, too. That’s what I should be telling you”
7. Weird Culty Family: Check, “they’re poison, Jacinda. I can’t expose you to them.” Sadly they are not “vegetarian” dragon hunters.
8. Obligatory Human Friend the Protagonist Uses But Mostly Ignores: Check, her name is Catherine, and mostly she provides info while Jacinda constantly rejects her offers to do something together. Gotta be an Immortal MagicPants to run with this crowd, sister.
9. Having to hold yourself back while making out for fear that Morality will manifest as real life danger: Check, in Twilight it was getting ripped to pieces by your vampire boyfriend, in Firelight it is accidentally setting your boyfriend on fire with your dragon flame-breath
10. Everything that looks like action turns out to be boring: Check. Although there is a brief confrontation between Cassian and Will, it ends abruptly and no one really gets hurt. Although Jacinda is famed for being the first dragon in forever who can breathe fire, she spends most of her time talking about how she “almost” did or exhaling steam.
11. No Plot until the last 50 pages: Firelight is not as guilty of this as Twilight, and Jacinda manages to stay conscious and unswooned for most of the action. The plot definitely picks up the pace towards the end, but then sort of stops randomly. I can’t decide if it’s setting up for a sequel, or the most anticlimactic, weird ending ever.
12. Controlling, abusive relationships: Props for Firelight on this one, because Jacinda is definitely less defined by men and her relationships with them. Will doesn’t try to control her physically or emotionally.
13. Writing style: 7th grade fanfiction: Although definitely not as bad as SMeyers, the word “shudders” occurs oddly often in this novel, especially in the context of things “shuddering past my lips”. Also the line “her amber eyes spit angry fire” is awesome if you take it literally.

Banned Books: Deal with It! -and- some amazing examples of webdesign that really put SWiggins to shame

Title: Deal with It! A whole new approach to your body, brain, and life as a gURL
Author: Esther Drill, Heather McDonald, Rebecca Odes, gURL.com
Challenged in: good old West Bend, Wisconsin Community Memorial Library
For: “being pornographic and worse than an R-rated movie”
Along with: Baby Be-Bop, Geography Club, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

So I know you’re bummed, but this is the last book on this year’s list that was challenged in West Bend. We’ve all grown really attached to the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries and their endearing little quirks, like their terrible webdesign skills and their desire to burn books about gay people. Ah, memories.

Incidentally, their awesome GoogleSites site appears just above my blog in a search for their own name, and is maybe one of the best websites I’ve seen since geocities died. Anything with that ratio of capitalized to uncapitalized words has got to be 100% legit. They also link pretty extensively to an organization called PABBIS or Parents Against Bad Books In Schools, which at least owns their own domain, but is not much better on the Only Knows the html For Bolding and Font Colors front. I love how they use the phrase “bad books” in a totally unironic way in their organization name. They try to provide an operational definition of “bad”, saying “Bad is not for us to determine. Bad is what you determine is bad. Bad is what you think is bad for your child. What each parent considers bad varies and depends on their unique situation, family and values. The main purpose of this webpage is to identify some books that might be considered bad and why someone might consider them bad. Another purpose of this webpage is to provide information related to bad books in schools.

Adorable. In much the same way that Twilight is adorable. So deluded it is almost cute. Almost. Except for that whole trying to burn books about gay people thing or encouraging abusive relationships1. You know, little details.

Anyway, all of this is really tangential to what I actually wanted to talk about today, Deal with It! A whole new approach to your body, brain, and life as a gURL. Once again, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries is really bad at reviewing books for content and style. Anyone who picks up this book on their recommendation, expecting pornography or an R-rated movie will be sadly disappointed. This book is basically exactly like the many books on puberty/sex/relationships/health written for teen girls, except much more detailed. Most of these sorts of books don’t also contain sections on managing your money, coping with mood swings, or changing relationships to parents and siblings, for instance, along with all the usual bad skin, buying bras, dealing with periods, practicing safe sex aspects. Naturally anyone who takes issue with the fact that some teens will have sex will freak out about this book, because it covers a different sexual acts, usually not in any great detail, but to familiarize the teen with what they are. It struck me not so much as a step-by-step guide (at least in this section), but more as a “Here are some things that exist so you don’t have to feel stupid when people mention them”. To this end, it also includes some of the more pervasive slang terms for sex acts/body parts, although these will probably begin to date it over time.

And, yes, there are diagrams and some cartoon drawings of naked women, but it would be really hard to write a book about Your Changing Body without that. They clearly have not read my personal favorite book on this topic, Body Drama: Real Girls, Real Bodies, Real Issues, Real Answers by Nancy Amanda Redd, which features an entire page of pictures of different breasts. For a demographic that spends a great deal of time worrying about if they’re “normal”, I think it’s important to show them that “normal” is a much wider, more diverse concept than they probably think. This is one of the issues I tend to be annoyingly vocal about, so I will quiet down for now.


1But am I trying to ban Twilight? No, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, I’m not. I’m educating my imaginary daughters about how to avoid abusive boyfriends and how to get help, and then letting them Twihard as much as they want, as long as they don’t get Edward’s face tattooed on their face or something.

Banned Books: The Perks of Being a Wallflower/I talk too much about myself

Title: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Author: Stephen Chbosky
Challenged at: West Bend, Wisconsin Community Memorial Library
At the same time as: Baby Be-Bop, Geography Club
For: “being obscene or child pornography” in the YA section
(Maybe Not So) Honorable Mention Challengings At: Portage, Indiana High Schools; Wyoming, Ohio High Schools; William Byrd and Hidden Valley Highschools of Roanoke, Virginia; probably others

You can read more about the school challenges here, and probably elsewhere, but since I am an Apprentice Librarian in a public library, I want to talk about West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries again. I feel like we bonded a little during my play-by-play notes from earlier this week. So here are some things I think probably upset them about this book:

1. Charlie’s best friend is gay
2. Charlie sometimes drinks
3. Charlie smokes (sometimes pot)
4. Charlie one time tried LSD, but decides never to do it again
5. Charlie’s friends have sex sometimes
6. Charlie gets halfway between second and third base

Which of these things would shock and appall a high school student? Which of them would they not have experience with, either personally or peripherally through just being in highschool? Maybe the LSD (maybe) depending on their highschool or group of friends.

I think this might be the first time I’ve read a young adult novel (especially one published by MTV!) that I honestly wish I had discovered while I was actually a young adult. And you know what? It has nothing to do with anything on that list up there, because that’s not what this book is about. Sorry, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, but I’m afraid you’re still looking at the forest and seeing only trees, or the book and seeing only drug-and-sex references. I’m a big believer in The Right Book for the Right Person at the Right Time; I think time is the part that gets left out or misunderstood. Since I did not have the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries to protect me, there were plenty of times when I was in elementary or middle school that I read books that were, I can freely admit now, way too old for me. Shockingly, I did not become a drug addict or a predator or suffer trauma. Most of the time, the things I weren’t ready for went right over my head. Or I stopped reading the book because it was boring since that didn’t interest me. Once you’re old enough to be curious, to ask questions, then you’re old enough to know some answers.

Anyway, with most YA novels, I recognize that high school Patricia would not have liked them, or thought they were beneath her (she was all about reading the collected works of Charles Dickens), but I think she would have gotten something out of this one (and, no, not the DL on LSD). The book is an epistolary novel of letters Charlie writes to an anonymous person he doesn’t really know chronicling his first year in high school. Charlie has an amazing insight into the world and is clearly incredibly intelligent, although he often is unsure of what to do in social situations. For most of the book, he leads a very passive existence, letting other people tell him how to act or what he should do or how to define his relationships. I think (despite her complaining that it’s not “real literature”) High School Patricia also really needed to learn that lesson. And, secretly, she knew it too, which is why she sometimes tried so hard to seem otherwise. I’m pretty sure I did not realize who I am AND decide to try to wear that unselfconsciously until freshmen or sophomore year of college. Maybe closer to sophomore year. I think that happens to a lot of teenagers, especially when they’re trying so hard to fit in with a certain group or be like some kind of mental image that they have a hard time figuring out who they actually are underneath, even when they want to. Which sucks, because people can be such jerks to you when you’re stuck being passive, like they’re allowed to take advantage of you or project whatever they want onto you since you appear to be almost blank, at least from the surface. Even sadder is that I bet some people never have a Summer-Before-Sophomore-Year fight with themselves and try to get over it. Some people are stuck in that blank, passive, fragile existence forever.</after-school special confessions time>

So, yeah, I kind of wish High School Patricia had read this book, although there’s no guarantee that she would recognize its message in herself, or if she was even ready to admit her own problems yet. I do know she would have scoffed at Charlie’s assessment of The Fountainhead which she hated, but probably agreed with him about To Kill a Mockingbird. It probably would have helped that both she and Charlie liked reading “serious” literature, though probably for different reasons.

In conclusion, this book made me think a lot, which is always good for anyone, even if it is about things that I would prefer to forget, like how I have not always been this awesome. Or at least, not as obviously.

Whenever I’m down on High School Patricia, though, I feel the need to also mention:

Published novel, what up?

Banned Books: Geography Club by Brent Hartinger

Title: Geography Club
Author: Brent Hartinger
Challenged at: West Bend, Wisconsin Community Library
For: “being obscene or child pornography” in a section designated for young adults

West Bend was also the community going after Baby Be-Bop, so it is possible that their definition of “pornography” is “mentioning gay people”. The West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries campaigned for about four months to have sexually explicit materials from the young adult section moved to the adult section and labelled “as containing sexual material”. On the one hand, labeling all the books that mention sex WOULD make their circulation suddenly go through the roof, but on the other hand, anyone picking up Geography Club because of its supposed sexiness is going to be extremely disappointed. The first person narrator only gets a few kisses over the course of the book, and anyone else who goes farther only mentions it rather obliquely. It sounds more to me like West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries is actually trying to “protect” teens from positive images of gay people in the misguided belief that not reading Geography Club will keep them safely heterosexual, or at least safely in the closet and depressed. Great job, West Bend, that’s pretty much the opposite of what we need.

Russel thinks he’s the only gay person at his school, and spends his days feeling horribly alone and terrified that at any time his secret might be somehow revealed, bringing with it social ostracism and possible violence. Then he meets another gay teen in a chat room from his home town, and they agree to meet. Russel is shocked when it turns out to be Kevin, super jock star of the baseball team! Soon after he discovers other gay or lesbian teens keeping their own secrets–including one of his best friends–and they decide to form an after-school club to discuss their commonalities and just hang out with people who know their secret. Because they don’t want any unwanted public attention, they decide to name the club “Geography Club” because it’s the most boring thing they can think of to keep other people away.

I found this book difficult to get into, maybe because the language used seemed kind of unrealistic for teens and the situations were a little too “now you are being treated the way you treated others; learn a lesson!” Also, I’m kind of surprised that West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries only objects to the fact that gay people exist in this book, because there are all kinds of unsafe behaviors going on that I find way more troubling. Like meeting someone from the Internet in a dark, scary park in the middle of the night. Or meeting your secret girlfriend in an abandon warehouse downtown.

Clearly this is just another book being attacked for portraying gay people in a positive way (or a normal way), which is incredibly depressing. I can get a little angry about it, but mostly I just feel sorry for people who think this way. It must be so hard to live in a world with so many troubling absolutes. In one of my classes we learned that the brain finds anything that doesn’t fit into an already-held world-view extremely difficult to process, and even emotionally upsetting, which is why sometimes it’s so hard to teach kids things. Once they assimilate the new information and adjust their preconceived notions accordingly, they’re okay and ready for the next assault of information. I think that’s what it must feel like, an assault, to these people who view the world as so black and white. Reality is constantly challenging their preconceived notions, and it must be emotional turmoil to constantly have to shut that out and not assimilate and adapt.

To prove my point, here are my play-by-play notes on the book. Obv spoiler alert, so don’t read if you are ever planning on reading Geography Club yourself and want to still be surprised by all the… two surprising events:
Read the rest of this entry »

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