Book Banning, Book Burning in 2009
Some stories hit too close to home.
A library in West Bend, Wisconsin, less than an hour’s drive from my home, is being harassed by the Milwaukee branch of the Christian Civil Liberties Union for displaying Baby Be-Bop, by Francesca Lia Block, a book in her “Weetzie Bat” YA series. Baby Be-Bop is the coming-of-age story of Weetzie’s best friend Dirk, who is gay.
The Milwaukee CCLU, not only wants the book taken off the library’s shelves. It wants the book publicly burned.
Think about that.
Oh, and the group also wants damages of $30,000 for each plaintiff as well as the resignation of West Bend’s mayor.
It’s enough to make me want to read the book, then buy a dozen copies and distribute them to high-school age kids who need a story that parallels their life experience.
And it makes me want to come up with an award befitting the heroic West Bend librarians and library board. Librarians are often on the front lines of defending our civil liberties, from free speech to privacy. It’s a job they do quietly every day, whether we know it or not.
The Milwaukee CCLU filed its claim after another group of self-appointed morality police calling itself West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, armed with a petition with 700 signatures, unsuccessfully attempted to pressure the library into either removing the book from its shelves, or, failing that, to shelve it with adult books.
A group called West Bend Parents for Free Speech, with their own petition with more than 1,000 signatures, worked against banning the book, and had reason to believe it had scored a victory for sanity and civil liberty when they defeated the “Safe Libraries” group.
Salon.com has an article about this situation with some quotes from Block with her perspective on the uproar over her book.
A couple of years ago, I received a chain e-mail urging everyone who read it to boycott the film adaptation of The Golden Compass because author Philip Pullman is an atheist. The message claimed that the movie would corrupt innocent children by making them doubt their faith. I shook my head and clicked “delete.”
But then a family member brought up the message during Christmas Day dinner. She said that based on what the chain e-mail claimed, she’d never see the movie.
I’ll admit I didn’t see the movie either, but I spent part of a Barnes & Noble gift card I received that day to buy Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. I enjoyed the first book well enough, but I would probably have petered out if I had come across the books on my own. I read through to the end of the trilogy mostly because I was told not to.
This year’s Banned Books Week is September 26-October 3, but I hope you’ll put a banned book on your summer reading list. It might be the most satisfying beach reading of all.