This past weekend I participated in the annual Los Angeles SCBWI conference. Since Covid, this conference has been held via Zoom. Writers from all over the world participate. I admire their tenacity as they get up at all hours of the day and night join classes held during Pacific Time. Our host for a peer review group, for example, was Zooming from Great Britain around midnight!
The first lecture I attended was called “Unbanning Books.” I learned that 2023 saw the highest number of book challenges since this type of censorship started to be tracked: 1,247! Interesting since, as one presenter said: “The First Amendment bans book bans.” Some, of course were the old favorites: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Bluest Eye, The Catcher in the Rye. Some of the more recent ones left me shaking my head: picture books about black artists; families with gay parents; stories about immigrants. If you’re a parent and don’t want your kid to read a particular book then don’t buy it or borrow it from the library. Book fair? Read the list of available books and pick them out with your child before the event.
Am I a person who has disapproved of certain books? Yes. When my oldest daughter was in 4th grade, her teacher decided to teach a unit on the Holocaust using The Diary of Anne Frank. I disapproved—not about teaching about the Holocaust but about using what I considered a Young Adult or upper Middle Grade book with 9-and-10-year-olds. Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars had just come out. I did tell the teacher I felt it was more age-appropriate. But I didn’t stop my child from participating in the class or ask that the book be taken out of the school library. Instead, I prepared to discuss any questions she might have.
Next spring I will have a new title out. It is about an athlete who accomplished an astounding goal. As it happens, my subject happens to belong to the LGBTQ community and suffered sexual abuse by a coach. None of that will be mentioned in the book, of course. It is a book meant to show young readers the rewards of tenacity. So, none of these “adult” issues will be brought up, any more than children’s biographies of Benjamin Franklin mention his famous letter "Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress." There’s plenty of kite-electricity-stove-and creating-the-United-States-stuff to interest young readers.
My book will be more focused on goals, skills, training, failures and, finally, triumph. But, I can’t help but wonder how many schools and libraries won’t be allowed to purchase the book because some adults will know the athlete’s name, and that the person is LGBTQ and, without reading a page, decide that their kids—and certainly other people’s kids—shouldn’t read it? In other words, how many people will have missed the whole point?
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