Little Blog On the Prairie

Evil, evil HTML Mencken, for pointing me at this:

Is it safe to let kids read?

We’ve all heard about librarians who don’t want filters to protect children. What about books? Who’s watching the publishers? Greg Smith’s blog notes that recently he looked through a publisher’s catalog at the YA titles and found:

A book on paralysis
A book on death of a parent, alcoholism, and unwanted pregnancy.
A book on death of a parent through cancer
A book on alcoholism
A book on armed assault with a deadly weapon
A book on death of both parents in a car crash
A book on death of both parents in a car crash and an unwanted pregnancy
A book whose catalog copy is vague, but appears to involve at least armed robbery and child abandonment
An historical book on suicide
A contemporary book on suicide
A book on death of a parent and economic hardship
A book on censorship. And sex.
A book on death by accidental shooting (or general stupidity)
A book on child abandonment, alcoholism, and an accident of indeterminate nature (resulting in, possibly, death)
A book on divorce
A book on death of a parent, economic hardship, robbery, and risking death.
Two books on (1960s) sex, drugs, and rock & roll (and therefore, at least metaphorically, death)

I’m glad I read only horse and dog stories when I was a kid (and Laura Ingalls Wilder); a lot of them were sad, but at least they didn’t commit suicide or steal.

I know, let’s build a big bonfire and burn all those nasty seditious, depressing books in a grand conflagration of all that’s icky.

Then, let’s decapitate those nasty liberal publishers in a loving, biblically Christian sort of way and just pop their heads up on a pole outside the church, so everyone can see what dwelling on unpleasantness can lead to.

Then there’ll never be any more bad things, never, ever again and all will be puppies and rainbows.

There, now, isn’t that nicer?

Published by Palau

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, washed the t-shirt 23 times, threw the t-shirt in the ragbag, now I'm polishing furniture with it.

6 Comments

  • Norma

    April 11, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    Oh yes, you’ve made childhood so much more pleasant. Thanks. Your hyperbole is a bit hyper. He lists actual titles in a publisher’s catalog and you’re off and running with decapitations. My, my. Touchy are we?

  • Samurai Librarian

    April 11, 2007 at 5:50 pm

    A librarian who doesn’t like books. I thought at first it was a parody site, but looking at her webrolls, Sadly, No! As a librarian and a cataloger, it is my considered opinion that this lady is a fookin’ eejit. Oh, and the frickin’ filters are a goddamn joke!

  • CS Lewis Jr.

    April 11, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    What’s wrong with horse and dog stories? Equus and Cujo sound like the perfect summer reading for li’l minds.

    I hope no one tells her about The Grounding of Group 6.

  • Palau

    April 12, 2007 at 3:23 am

    Yes, children should stick to reading the bible. Nothing disturbing in that at all, oh no.

    Norma:

    the very nature of hyperbole is that it is hyper. Look, it’s even part of the word. Re actual titles, those are not ‘actual titles’ – those are descriptions of the content of the books. An example of an ‘actual title’ might be ‘A Short History Of Brainless Censorship”, to give one hypothetical example.

    And you a librarian too. Tsk. Or should I say ‘ook’.

  • JoeBuddha

    April 12, 2007 at 10:15 am

    “Think of the Children!” The call of the censors.

    It isn’t the LIBRARIAN’s job to raise my kids! I’ve always believed that my children would only read what they were ready to read, and they’ve done just fine, thank-you. The problem with not exposing your kids to reality, especially as “YA”, is that they emerge poorly equipped to deal with the real world when they become “A”. Also, for some reason, censorship always seems to be strongly tilted toward the political right. Talk about child abuse!

  • Palau

    April 12, 2007 at 4:21 pm

    CS: that looks good, I’ll have to read it.