Censorship

Banned Books Week is fast approaching. I say "fast" because the last 2 months have literally flown by for me, and I can't help but imagine that the next will move just as quickly.

Being in a high school library, in red, "Bible Belt" state, I frequently think about censorship. When my new principal and I talked this summer, it came up. It just does. Not about anything specific, but just my, and his, general thoughts about it. The books you may find in my collection that are "questionable" (at worst) are books that I know there's kid in my school needs to read. I may not make a big deal of having it, it may never make a display or be booktalked to a large group, but it's there.

Is this censorship? Maybe. Probably. Censorship by omission? I'll grant that I am being "actively inactive" about those books. It's my experience that, generally, the books that get challenged are the ones with a lot of hoopla attached before a challenge was filed. That's not to say those books should've been the subject of a challenge. I firmly believe that

Censorship, like charity, should begin in the home, but unlike charity it should end there.

(I don't know who said that, a quick Google search didn't turn up an answer. If you know, feel free to tell me in the comments.)

This morning, while reading about something completely unrelated on LM_Net, I came across this quote.

"Kids are living stories every day that we wouldn't let them read. "--Josh Westbrook

My gosh...isn't that the truth? I can't imagine telling a kid he can't read a book because the subject matter isn't appropriate in our school when he's living it everyday of his life.

The way it is..

I’m writing this from a netbook that’s fully functioning, connected to a network, and set up in a classroom watching 31 kids who have voluntarily given up summer free time to attend summer school. (Okay, I know “voluntarily” may be a bit of a stretch. Some of these kiddos were volunteered by their parents.) Some are making up credits, some are working to get a little ahead.

 

This morning, we’re sitting around staring at each other. Our Internet server is still asleep and we’re waiting on a tech to take care of us. Other than having a couple ask if they have to stay since they can’t work anyway, everyone’s entertaining themselves. We’ve got solitaire and pinball going on some computers. It’s kind of nice in here. Beats being in the summer heat.

 

But it’s bugging me that we’ve basically lost instruction time. In the interest of efficiency and expediency, and well..cost-effectiveness….we’ve eliminated teachers actually teaching credit classes. At least in summer school. I can’t help but think that if we’d put all the kids in similar subjects in a room with a teacher, that some teaching and learning could have been happening for the last 45 minutes, as opposed to honing our solitaire skills. (Which is important for life, you know?) I could come up with some throw-down activity, but I’m monitoring the learning of 31 students taking 11 different subjects. How exactly do I make the telephone game relevant to all of them? Might as well circle up for some duck-duck-goose.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about technology. Love it. I have more technology at my fingers—and know how to use it and implement its use in the classroom—than I ever imagined having. I love using it as a tool when working with my teachers and students. But what happened to just teaching? I still think that more often than the computer gurus would like, the best teaching comes from paper and pencil tasks and chalk on a chalkboard (or the equivalent). We depend on the technology so much we’re hamstrung when it fails us.

 

I’m not any better in my personal life. I mean, I own a regular laptop at home plus this netbook, plus an iPhone. Yesterday, I got a little frantic when I realized my phone was so completely out of juice that I actually had to wait 20 minutes for it to have enough to support my email checking and texting while plugged in to charge. Sigh.

Good Behavior (by Nathan L. Henry)

At age 16, Nathan Henry spent a year in county jail, most of it spent waiting on his trial for armed robbery.

He really wasn't a bad kid. Not the kind of kid whose parents just know when he's born that he's trouble. But he became the kind of kid nightmares are made of--drugs, violence, sex, and some seemingly psychotic tendencies (what do you call killing gophers because you can?). Add in a painfully rural small town childhood, a father forcing his own psychoses on Nate, and a mental health system that "healed him up, then shipped him out" without a second glance. But Nate's not a lost cause. And I think that's the real lesson for adults--that not every kid who seems to be really is unreachable and unredeemable. They can be salvaged, can be turned, even when we don't try.

Nate's story is gritty and compelling. This was not merely a page-turner, it was a page-gripping read that I didn't put down until I was finished. Nate's story, told in alternating chapters (the life that led to jail and the months he spent there reflecting), is reality. While some may think it an extreme case of teenage reality, I think it will be altogether too familiar to many

Nathan's story of his year in jail and the life that led him there combine to create a powerful portrait of an American youth gone bad—and a moving story of redemption.
(From the Bloomsbury site blurb.)

This title is not yet available for purchase. I received an ARC while at TLA this year. The book is due to be published in July 2010, from Bloomsbury Publishing. Because it has not yet been finalized and published, there is no cover art to share.

The Kid Table (by Andrea Seigel)

Thanksgiving and you're stuck at the kid table again? You know the rules:

1. You're a kid until the adults say you're not.* You can drive, but you still have to sit with a toddler.
2. Know your role: If the family thinks you're rebellious, rebel.
3. What happens at the kid table stays at the kid table. Talking to a cousin is like talking to a priest.
*The definition of kid does not have to be equal or fair; cousins may be upgraded to the adult table at any time.
(From the front cover of the ARC)

Just reading the blurb on the front of the ARC had me going---I remember my years at the kid table all too well. Ours even had varying sizes as the majority of us got older and couldn't fit at the little one anymore.

Ingrid and her teenage cousins are perpetually stuck at the kid table, until Brianne shows up for their 40-something uncle's "bar mitzvah" with her new boyfriend. Suddenly, everyone's anxious to be seen as an adult, except for maybe Ingrid.

Ingrid's long been a little on the outside--just as loved and close to all her cousins as the others, but somehow a little separate. She doesn't emote unless necessary and often comes across as cold to the family. Couple that with the odd fact that pets seem to die around her, suddenly and strangely, and well...maybe Brianne the psychology major is right about her "diagnosis" of Ingrid. The introduction of Brianne's boyfriend causes some serious turmoil for Ingrid, and just might crack her shell.

I love the characters in this book. Everyone is so vividly real that I felt that I could've been at my own family's kid table. All of them have a coming of age moment or two, but there's none of the requisite (and often overdone) teenage angstiness that so many YA novels have. In the end they all realize what the kid table has always meant for the whole family, and how they've all evolved.

This title is not yet available for purchase. I received an ARC at TLA this year. The book is due to be published September 2010, from Bloomsbury Children's Books. Because the book has not yet been finalized and published, there is no cover art to share.


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More experimenting…bear with me

So I’m doing a little more experimenting. Found this Windows Live Writer software and I’m trying it out for blogging here. Not sure I’m going to like it, but we’ll see.

 

Any pointers?