According to the American Library Association, “Books usually are challenged with the best intentions—to protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and information.” However, the contrasting opinion is that it is the responsibility of the parents of these children that society is trying so hard to protect to censor what they read. During a personal interview with Amanda Jackson, Director of the Gadsden Public Library, she stated in response to book banning that, “Public libraries are there for the entire community, what may be offensive to one person may be therapy to another.”
Literature is a window into the unknown. When reading historical based novels, one can understand cultures from the past. The pages from the fantasy genre create the unimaginable. To me, books are the lives of what could be, gifting hope to my soul, and creativity to my mind. For every unique quality of humanity, there is a uniqueness within literature. Furthermore, each text whether novel, poem, or short story has the ability to change at least one life. In my case, each and every book that I have read throughout my life has impacted bits and pieces of who I am to help me to become the person I am today. By living vicariously through the lives of these written characters we learn consequences and triumphs of acts without necessarily having to experience them ourselves.
Today, the act of challenging books is more prevalent than actually banning books unlike the past. Specifically, some smaller communities and schools have banned books in their specific district, or during Nazi Germany there were hundreds of books that were not only banned but burned due to anti-Hitler propaganda, during the 80’s a town banned Anne Frank due to the emotional turmoil that it invoked, and the Lorax by Dr. Seuss has also been banned in a small community whose economic revenue was dependent upon logging.
A Bridge to Terabithia is a heart wrenchingly lovely novel full of friendship and loss. I was fortunate enough to never lose a childhood friend the way that Jesse lost Leslie, but the depth of their friendship instilled upon me the knowledge that love is worth losing because friendship and love are eternal even though the one’s we love aren’t. Many individuals would consider the grave loss and emotional turmoil of this novel to be reason enough to add it to the list of banned books; however, it is exactly those emotions that the text invoke that make it the classic that it is. Thanks to the words written by Katherine Paterson, when later in my life I lost a beloved grandfather while there was still anger and hurt I remembered that a little bit of time together is more worthwhile than never experiencing the loss.
Based upon a precedent that Amanda Jackson and others have noticed, many young adult books are contested or banned due to, “language, sex, or drugs.” Coming from my own experience to try and eradicate literature that touches on the unseemly side of society is naïve because bad language, sex, and drugs are prevalent throughout the social environment of today’s world. From the perspective of not only a Director of a public library, but also from the experience of a mother, Amanda Jackson has found that literature allows for, “a gateway to discuss difficult subjects and emotions.”
“The American Library Association promotes the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinions even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular, and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those viewpoints to all who wish to read them.” As said by Amanda Jackson, a local library director, “we can’t protect everyone from everything, we have to trust people to make their own decisions.” Her words are applicable to many aspects of life, but as bookworm myself, I see the words as a gift of trust to read what is appropriate for me. Most public libraries also provide distinct impressions of maturity of the literature available by making clear the areas of children, teen, and adult books.
