Some Thoughs On Books, YA Lit, and Censorship {Eleanor and Park}

Earlier this morning, I opened up my blog reader, as I so often do, and found this post. The post (which is from one of my favorite websites), talks about lots of interesting and fun things, but there were a few things which stood out to me. Go look over that post, and then read what I have to say. I'll quote it a little, but I don't want to steal their thunder.

The Parents Action League of Minnesota's Anoka-Hennepin school district is working to ban Eleanor & Park—a book supposedly “littered with extreme profanity and age-inappropriate subject matter”—from the high school reading list. Here’s what author Rainbow Rowell had to say about the situation. NPR even weighed in on the issue.

This is the section I want to talk about.  Now, please go read each of the three links. The first from a school district explaining why they wish to ban Eleanor and Park, and book that I read, loved, and reviewed, this spring. The second is an interview with the author, and the third is an NPR book critic's very thoughtful comments on the issue. I'm not going to just reitrate what they said, though that would be easy to do. Instead, I'm going to discuss this issue from another point of view: as a teenager, the exact group of people these ADULTS say should not be reading this book.

The first complaint these people had was about the profanity. Honestly, it really didn't bother me. Swearing is something that I'm used to seeing in books, but that does not mean that I like it, or never mind. There are plenty of books that I have read that used swearing as a tool, to show that they were cool, or to emphasize a point, and I don't like that. The profanity in Eleanor and Park is honest and real. It feels real, and makes a subtle point about the teens at the high school.

The second complain is about the story. They say that it is inappropriate for teens to read about the events in the book. It didn't bother me. More then that, these things that people complain about are some of what I liked the best about this book. It feels REAL. I don't want to read about sugar coated teens who never drink, or swear, or have sex, and who have perfect home lives. Why? Those people aren't real. They feel fake. Eleanor is an amazing character. Yeah, her situation sucks big time, but she makes it through. Her relationship with Park is heartbreakingly sweet, and yet so sad, and all so, so real.

For me, the real bottom line is that I don't think books should be banned. I don't think anybody should be required to read Eleanor and Park, but I think anybody should be able to. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and for the parents who wrote that article don't want their kids to read this book, it is their right to enforce that in their own home. But I think that that book should still be available to all those teens to wish to read and enjoy this book.

On an unrelated note, that same FYA article linkd to this awesome list of the 25 best YA books featuring LGBTQ teens. I've only read 5, but there really are some pretty great books on that list if you're looking for something to read.