Robie Harris, Joan Bertin, Charlotte Jones Voiklis, Leonard Marcus, Elizabeth Levy, and Betsy Bird participate in an NYPL panel on censorship
What are the biggest problems facing children’s and young adult book authors when it comes to censorship? “We write for children, but the gatekeepers are adults,” said author Elizabeth Levy, one of several authors participating in a New York Public Library (NYPL) Children’s Literary Salon, “This Censorious World: Books for Children and Their Challenges,” on February 1.
The speakers discussed pressing censorship issues surrounding children’s literature, from self-censorship by authors and librarians to schools that rate titles for appropriateness, and the chilling impact a challenge can have on a book.
After children’s literature historian and author Leonard Marcus provided historical context for censorship, describing the Puritanical roots of the United States, Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, noted some disturbing current trends. Traditionally, the most challenged books have been those for younger children, but lately, this has changed, Bertin said. Among 49 of the most recent challenges she’s seen, 31 have been for books aimed at students grades nine and above. “If this literature is not acceptable at high school, there are people who are really thinking it’s just not acceptable, period,” said Bertin.
Bertin asserted that books’ places in libraries can be threatened in ways beyond simply being banned. She cited a current trend in school boards to assign ratings to books, just as films are rated. In North Carolina, after a school board agreed to retain Alice Walker’s challenged The Color Purple (Harcourt, 1982), its superintendent promised parents that teachers would create annotated bibliographies explaining why certain works of literature might appear frequently on challenged lists. Bertin was concerned that such a list would might enable parents to make future challenges.
The problem of self-censorship—when authors or librarians avoiding certain themes or titles in anticipation of outcry—was a thread running through the conversation. Author Robie Harris, whose books It’s Perfectly Normal: A Book About Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health and It’s So Amazing: A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families (1994 and 1999, both Candlewick) were two of the American Library Association’s (ALA) most challenged books of 2000–09, discussed several of her own experiences with censorship. Her books have been stolen from libraries, and photocopied pages of her books publicly burned, she said.
Harris feels deeply for librarians and booksellers in communities where her books are challenged. They face hostility from those who believe the books to be harmful, and Harris fears that her concern for them may inadvertently impact her work. “You second guess yourself a lot,” she said. “What I worry about is unconsciously self-censoring myself.”
Charlotte Jones Voiklis described some of the challenges her grandmother, A Wrinkle in Time (Ariel, 1962) author Madeleine L’Engle, faced, and described how this has led to her being more cautious in her own writing. When L’Engle was writing The Moon by Night (Ariel, 1963), she was so sensitive to potential charges of profanity that she had one of her characters use the made-up expletive “zuggy” in place of stronger language. Even so, some readers still complained about L’Engle’s made-up swear word, said Voiklis.
Bertin cited the chilling impact a challenge has on a book, even if the challenge isn’t successful in removing a title from the library. “It has an effect on what teachers and librarians are going to do in that school, especially if it’s been divisive,” Bertin said.
Sympathy for librarians, as well as admiration for their courage, were themes throughout the panel. “They’re the ones facing it,” said Levy. Moderator and NYPL youth materials specialist Betsy Bird spoke about the new prize approved by ALA, the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity, established by author Daniel Handler, with a $3,000 award. Though the prize doesn’t explicitly involve censorship, in Bird’s view, it is targeted toward those who have had to deal with book bans.
Overall, Levy, who has written more than 80 books, including The Drowned (Hyperion, 1995) and Tackling Dad (HarperCollins, 2005), and serves on the PEN Children’s and Young Adult Book Author Committee, stressed the importance of sticking together when it comes to standing up against censorship. She said that she couldn’t have persevered “without the community of writers, who have sometimes given me the courage to keep writing when I want to back away.”
