Banned and Burned – Books People Love to Hate

I’ve read books that seemed to serve no purpose other than to enrage, insult, or disgust the reader. I’d never call for these books to be banned – freedom of speech is a precious right! – but I have questioned what the author hoped to accomplish by spewing such worthless crap. I recently read an article in the Texas Library Journal about “challenged” books – books that people have called on to be banned in schools and libraries and some of which people have publicly burned. Among them were two novels that I’d read and re-read during my adolescent years, both by author Judy Blume.

The first – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – featured a pubescent heroine of mixed-religion parents learning about spirituality, boys, menstruation, and life in general. In other words, the character goes through the exact same things every adolescent girl does – PUBERTY. Oooh, scary! Ban it now!

The other – Forever – is admittedly on a different scale. The main character in that novel, a teenaged girl, loses her virginity to her boyfriend on a colorful rug. Teen sex – yikes! I can’t for the life of me remember the main character’s name, but I remember the boyfriend’s name was Michael. But what struck me then, and has stuck with me to this day, was that the couple eventually broke up and when the heroine later ran into Michael again she felt very apart from him, the closeness gone. If anything, the lesson of the book is that a girl shouldn’t give up her virginity easily because the boy who means everything to her today may be only a vague memory later on.

Fear seems to drive people to cry for censorship. But isn’t it better to open a dialogue and confront the controversial issues head on? It’s only by openly talking about them that information can be shared.

As I ease into my forties, I’m hoping to find out that Judy Blume has written a book about a woman going through menopause. I don’t think I can go through it without her!