Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 4, 1994 TAG: 9409210021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Elizabeth Strother editorial writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I am the fourth of five children, and somewhere in my toddlerhood my mother got fed up with having four children chasing around this circle. She prevailed upon my dad to close off the doorway between the hall and the kitchen, and on one side of the new wall they put our icebox, as if to fortify the barricade. In the hall, Dad put shelves in what had been the doorway, and we had a built-in bookcase.
That is the way I remember the house, and I remember that bookcase like it was a part of the family. On the top shelf were knickknacks and a framed silhouette of St. Francis of Assisi with crumpled, colored foil in the background, made by Uncle Herm in the seminary; on the bottom shelf, an entire row of Reader's Digest condensed books, which I mined like a vein of gold for stories. In between were rows of more adult books: hardbound volumes given us by Uncle Ray, who was discarding them, and many more paperbacks that my oldest brother, Bob, bought for a quarter each at the drugstore.
I considered these vaguely taboo, though I had never been forbidden to read them. But Bob was seven years older than I and, needless to say, his interests were distinctly different. He had everything on those shelves from crime novels about hard-bitten detectives to "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." So it was sort of a rite of passage when I got through all the condensed books of interest and started scanning the titles on the middle shelves.
I believe it was Bob who directed me to "To Kill a Mockingbird," but I was reluctant to read it. The cover was an abstract drawing of a bird surrounded by different colored arrow-type slash marks, and I was afraid it was about some bird being tortured.
Bob was a good brother, generally, but I wasn't forgetting his "Dracula" phase of a few years earlier. After he read that horror classic, he terrified me with the story of this blood-sucking vampire, swore it was true, then crawled with brother Bill into my and my sister's bedroom after the house was dark and whispered, "Leeet me drrrink your blooood."
I took the book to Mother, who assured me it wasn't about a bird at all, but said it was probably too old for me. I read it then, of course, and it introduced me to adult problems and cruelties worse even than killing small animals.
I cried for Tom Robinson and his family and for Boo Radley. The story was sad, sometimes scary, sometimes bewildering, but it also was funny and loving and hopeful, and Jem, Scout and Dill were as alive as my neighborhood friends. I loved that book like nothing I had read before.
I started musing on all of this the other day, when the mail brought this year's state-by-state report from People for the American Way detailing challenges to books in public schools and libraries. On the list of most-frequently challenged books over the past dozen years: John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men," Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."
This year's report is thick, one-half inch on 8-by-11 pages. Attacks on books and student newspapers, plays and magazines are on the rise, it noted; 42 percent of the challenges result in removal or restriction of the material, and teachers and librarians have been harassed and fired after some challenges.
I'm left wondering what these parents and political organizations - both liberal and conservative - are afraid of. The best books won't teach their kids what to think, but to think.
Not that I fault parents at all for wanting to know what their kids are reading and, in some cases, for withholding - or trying to withhold - material they find inappropriate. But why must their judgment apply to everybody else's kids? The censorship report doesn't include requests or agreements by parents to remove their own children from a class or curriculum. The challenges are by people who want to deny everyone's children exposure to ideas or information they don't like.
One of my greatest pleasures is giving books to a friend's daughter, whom I've known since she was 5. I read childhood treasures like Babar and Dr. Seuss to Elizabeth when she was little, and bought her many little books - short, big type, about various teen or preteen circles of friends - once she learned to read. She gobbled them like candy.
Once she could read well, I bought her what I considered her first real book, "Heidi." Lots of pages, not many pictures. She thanked me awkwardly and set it aside - for a year. When she finally picked it up, though, she was captivated, and discovered the deep pleasure of reading real novels.
Elizabeth is 14 now. Last year she had to pick a book from her class reading list and asked me about "Go Ask Alice," a book, I noticed last week with interest, that made the top-10 list of most frequently challenged books. I had never read it, but I knew of it and told her it was the diary of a young girl who got hooked on drugs and died just as she was trying to go straight. It might be good for her to read.
She was well into it when I saw her next, and she was angry at me. The book obviously was bothering her greatly, and I had recommended it. I said perhaps it was too hard for her to handle, and advised her to quit reading it if she couldn't bear it. She did, and felt better the next day.
She went back later, though, and finished the book. Why did you do that, I asked her after skimming through some of the objections in specific book challenges listed in the censorship report.
"It was hard," she conceded, "but I felt like I should. And I'm glad I did. Because I know I'm never, never, never ever going to do drugs now."
It is the dark we must fear, not the light.
by CNB