DEFENDING JUDY

Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and give a big round of applause for the return of Banning Literature for the Safety of Our Children! We know that our young ones are living in a world filled with sex, war and violence, but we can’t do anything about that so we’ll do the next logical thing: we’ll ban books so they can’t escape it! We must not allow them access to the worlds created by Lewis Carroll, Aesop and The Brothers Grimm; those worlds are filled with witchcraft and little girls on opiates! We certainly can’t let them read the books of Mark Twain; they might think that befriending people of different colors is acceptable! And what, you may ask, are the books deemed most damaging to young minds? They are the books written by that destroyer of innocence, that harlot of literature, that woman called Judy Blume.

So let’s forget the fact that this generation of young girls and women are inundated everyday with pictures of a panty-less Britney, rap songs and videos that portray them as nothing but mindless sex objects, and magazines that drill into their heads that they must all be a size zero to fit in, and let’s focus on the fact that it’s their parents who are asking that the books of Judy Blume be banned from school libraries. Don’t you find it ironic that many of these mothers now on the banning committee are probably the young girls that gobbled these books up when they first came out?

I am still trying to figure out exactly what it is about these books that has so many parents and teachers up in arms. I can remember very clearly going to my small town library and asking for one of them without a problem; now, they are on what is called the ‘restricted shelf’, and cannot be signed out unless permission is granted by a parent or guardian. So let’s examine them, shall we? Let’s dissect these books and you can make up your mind as to whether or not they should be put on the fire.

The first book up for discussion is ‘Blubber’, a novel about an overweight girl who is bullied and tormented by her peers. This book was published in 1972 and remains on the Challenged List to this day; it deals with the still relevant issues of body image, peer pressure and the desire to be accepted, but it is now considered to be offensive in its use of language, mean spirited, and it teaches children how to ostracize those who are ‘different’. Let me just state that this offensive language that they are speaking of is no more colorful than the words these kids hear every day on television.

The next on the List is ‘Tiger Eyes’, a book very close to my heart; it is the story of a young girl called Davey, who is struggling to come to terms with the violent death of her father, feelings of isolation and depression, and being uprooted by her mother. This book came along at a time in my life where I was dealing with the loss of my own father, not by death but by desertion, and I felt her pain; it helped me cope with the sadness and desperation, and it is still proudly displayed on my bookshelf. ‘Tiger Eyes’ is deemed by some to be too violent for young readers and the language too offensive, when in actuality there is more violence in the video games that these parents allow their children to sit in front of for hours at a time.

And finally we come to what should be considered a right of passage for all tweens and young women, the novel that still ranks number two on the Most Challenged List thirty-six years after it was first published, ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’. Why is it deemed so offensive? Because it dares to bring up the subjects of sex and religion, and it has an open and honest approach to both; it leaves the reader (or at least it did me) with the idea that our bodies are not something to be ashamed of, and that our opinions matter. It tells young women that they should never be afraid to ask about the changes our bodies go through, and that religion is not something that should be foisted on us; it too should be questioned and researched.

These books are not harmful; they don’t tell young people to go on shooting rampages or to be sexually active to achieve status and popularity, but they do force the reader to think. Call me silly if you want, but shouldn’t a generation of well-rounded, free-thinking, literate youngsters be considered a good thing? You decide.