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The ALA’s list of banned and challenged classics

#4 – To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
#9 – 1984 – George Orwell
#17 – Animal Farm – George Orwell

These are important because they’re some of the only assigned reading I finished when I was in high school. I read all three in eighth grade. Books I never finished included anything by Dickens or Shakespear. Ever read Great Expectations? Wanna talk about screwed up home life? That story puts any reality show to shame. But only barely.

Not on the list:

• All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque. More required reading that I finished, and the graphic descriptions of violence and other things gave me nightmares for months. I’m not sorry I read it, but still.
• Hamlet
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  Oliver Twist

Let’s see…man pretends to be crazy to out his father’s killer and everyone dies
…wood nymphs get it on…and not necessarily honestly
…orphan boy steals, cheats, lies, and lives a horrendous life…at least at first

Also not on the list (also not classics, or recommended reading, but still) any of the novels I found at the library and passed around to my friends at school when I realized they had ‘naughty’ scenes in them. The book I read about devil worship. VC Andrews (all of my friends read Flowers in the Attic).

Here’s the thing about all of these. My parents knew I read them. My parents who were upstanding members of their religous community. They even knew about the devil worship one. They allowed it. They encouraged it. And, oh yeah, my father was always available to answer any questions I had about what I’d read.

Then again, I claim allegience to a god of mischeif now, so maybe all that reading when I was younger was bad for me. All that learning. Self-education. I recently discovered Kurt Vonnegut (late bloomer I suppose) and was absolutely infatuated with Cat’s Cradle but there’s no way I would have understood the underlying theme of the story 20 years ago.

I’m glad I was exposed to those things, even if it was only through words, because then I knew what they were. Hiding me from the reality of fiction wouldn’t have done anything except made sure I was ill-prepared for the real-life version of it. Oh, and thanks to ‘All Quiet’, I still cringe at war movies, Hollywood blood, and gory violence.

Draw your own conclusions. Your children aren’t mine to raise or to tell what to read. Then again, no one else’s children are yours to raise or tell what to read, either.