Self-Censorship and YA Literature

Originally Posted on LiveJournal Feb. 26th, 2009 at 9:43 PM

Okay, so it's been WEEKS since I decided to do this thing called blogging, and then panicked, and never came back. Why? Censorship, mostly. Self censorship. (Which, I guess, is better than self-centeredness, but I digress). I was worried about confusing Americans with spellings like "colour" and "neighbour"...then someone commented that most Americans would know I wasn't an idiot (I'm paraphrasing), because if they have half a brain, they'd recognize it as legitimate spellings...which made me worry that I'd offended Americans by suggesting they weren't sophisticated enough to pick up on the cultural variation. I also worry about revealing too much of my private self (because once I start wrtiing, I just can't stop!) and accidentally saying something about my students that will get me fired (because teaching is my day job - hi kids!!!!). Hence, I haven't done a thing here. Today, though, I got the nudge I needed, in the form of an email and conversation with our school librarian. The email was all about CENSORSHIP.
School Library Journal recently ran an article about librarians, and how they often act as their own censors when choosing material they deem appropriate for children and young adults. You can read the article here if you are interested, but it was the last two paragraphs that really struck me: “Librarians need to remember that it’s not their job to impose their own ideologies on the kids they serve or to parent or protect them, Scales says. And even though schools are required to act in loco parentis—Latin for ‘in place of parent’—the doctrine only applies to school librarians when it comes to the safety and health of their students, not when it comes to censorship, she adds.'You won’t ever make a difference if you don’t step out of the box,” she says. “And we can make a difference to children. Who knows? That very book that you thought was inappropriate may be the one that turns a child in the direction that he needs to be going or that gives a child quiet hope about a situation.’”
Ironically, it was our school librarian who first alerted me to the article. Less than twenty-four hours later, however, he mentioned to me that he has $4000 to spend on new books for our school library, Kindergarten through grade eight. I got excited, because I’d just loaned him two of my current YA favourites – Sweethearts, by Sara Zarr, and Twisted, by Laurie Halse Anderson. “You’re going to get Sweethearts and Twisted, right?” I asked, breathless with anticipation of cool book talks with fiction-loving grade eight students. “I don’t know…” he said. “They aren’t as good as your book…” (I think he’s wrong, but yay) “…and anyway, the older kids don’t read, so I don’t want to spend the money there.” HELLOOO???? What’s wrong with this picture??? Everything, everything, we know about literacy says kids need engaging material. My books (Painting Caitlyn and Posing as Ashley) are never on the shelf in our school library– they are ALWAYS signed out. I know a lot of that is just because I am their French teacher, and it is waaaay cool to read the words “breast” and “sex” when – OMG – your teacher wrote it!!! But YALSA also chose Painting Caitlyn as a Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, so I like to believe that the books have some merit on their own, apart from the students’ personal connections to the author. The fact that they are always signed out proves that by putting quality material, chosen by teen advisory groups, in the library, we can make them readers . Our librarian doesn’t want to spend money on the older kids because they don’t read….but what are they supposed to read if we don’t spend money on them? And why doesn’t our librarian see that giving up on YA readers is one of the most insidious forms of censorship there is?