Banning Books Is a Badge of Shame for Censors | Opinion
Maus wound up back on the bestseller lists after it was banned by a Tennessee school district in 2022.This might be true for a handful of authors—especially those who are already well-known and whose books are aimed at adults—but for most children's book authors and illustrators who have been caught up in the cynical snare of groups like Moms for Liberty, book bans are career-wrecking, psychically exhausting, and a threat to any American who values freedom and self-determination.Book challenges have existed since the Puritan times and have ebbed and flowed through our country's history.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was widely banned when it came out in 1852 (it still is) and the backlash to the counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s led to a rise of bans during the Reagan years of the 1980s.When I first learned my earlier titles had been challenged, for reasons that now seem quaint (vulgar language and PG-13 sex scenes) I felt a mix of accomplishment (akin to seeing one of my books in an airport bookstore) and compassion.
It seemed like parents were engaging in a sort of magical thinking that by keeping their children from reading about abuse or suicide in books like Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of Part-Time Indian and Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, they would protect them from such catastrophes.
The logic may have been misguided, and riddled with all kinds of internalized biases, but it seemed to come from a place of care and love.The bans that we have seen recently cropping up all over the country have nothing to do with care and love.
