To Ban Or Not To Ban Is Not Even the Question...

May 22, 2025

What a Banned Book Actually Is

Moscow. 1981. The book was a copy of The Ugly Swans by The Strugatsky Brothers. The place was the underground crossing at the Prospect Marxa Metro Station. Time was right before closing: half past midnight. Return time: 24 hours later.

Don’t. Get. Caught.

This was my husband’s first brush with an actual banned book by the Soviet government. The punishment, if caught, could have been up to five years in a labor camp, under Article 70 of the U.S.S.R. Criminal Code dealing with the distribution of anti-Soviet propaganda.

For the record, my husband knew many of the people Solzhenitsyn wrote about in The Gulag Archipelago.

If you haven’t read it, you should.

If you know what I’m talking about, then you also know better than to use the term “banned” when discussing whether or not books should be used as either optional or required reading in schools. A “banned” book is one which is illegal to read or possess. It is an insult to those who actually risked going to labor camps in order to read such books as the Bible, The Gulag Archipelago, Lolita, or 1984, such as my husband.

To say that asking teachers NOT to read certain books to your child is the equivalent of banning those book is to mask the real issue at hand: parental rights and the freedom NOT to have your children (especially the very young and therefore unquestioningly impressionable) taught a doctrinal belief system which you as a parent deem inappropriate, not least of which when children are ever increasingly not even taught the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic! Books that are being challenged as appropriate for inclusion in schools and libraries are not banned books.

U.S. Supreme Court Controversy

Now almost a month ago, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case called Mahmoud v. Taylor1 where parents in a school district were suddenly not allowed to opt out of exposing their children to books which taught worldviews which they say violate their First Amendment Rights, specifically a violation of their Freedom of Religion. More to the point, the school district made the teaching of LGBTQ+ part of the school’s literature curriculum starting in preschool. Whereas parents had been allowed to opt their children out of sex education (which technically starts in the 3rd grade), the switch to make LGBTQ+ part of the regular school curriculum, under the guise of anti-bullying, diversity, tolerance, and inclusion and as part of their English literature curriculum, they justified parents being denied the right to opt their children out of being taught such things as being born in the “wrong” body and gay marriage.

Not being one to simply take a stance without looking into the controversy more thoroughly, I headed over to my local library to see if I could check out copies of these so-called “banned” books. Shockingly, and all without a single threat of time in the Gulag, I was able to put in a request for all of the books under discussion in the Supreme Court. Not only that, but I was very kindly helped by multiple librarians to find and check out right then and there three of the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2024 (the books most censored and “banned” from schools and libraries published by the American Library Association).

“Teen” Section

Has there always been a “Teen” section in the library? I know I’ve seen it off to one side or another as I was headed into adjacent sections. I grew up going to libraries. My first official job (and many thereafter) were in libraries. I volunteered in libraries. I spent countless hours exploring, hiding, and getting lost in libraries. Whenever I travel, I go out of my way to visit local libraries. In fact, when given a choice, I would rather find a nook or cranny in some hidden corner of the library and curl up with a good book than do almost anything else.

But, somehow, I never managed to give more than a peripheral glance at a “Teen” section before looking for these “banned” books. What really struck me in my local library was just how deeply depressing many of the titles were: death, pain, lying, manipulation, sex, identity, LGBTQ+, racism, jealousy, witchcraft and magic, were common and oft-repeated themes. I recognized virtually none of the titles, though standing out among the poetry books were what looked to be the entire opus of Shel Silverstein. (There’s nothing more bizarre than the juxtaposition of The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein with Tricks by Ellen Hopkins, but more on that later.) Is this normal?! Very curious now to go check out every Teen section and see if this one is simply an anomaly.

My take-away from this Teen section was: No wonder kids don’t read…or want to read. I wouldn’t want to either if this were my choice. And, if I did, and this were all I read, I would be seriously depressed or otherwise mentally deranged by the choices made available. I walked away from my library visit with the question of whether or not it would be better to simply be illiterate. That was a novel thought for me, no pun intended.

With that said, I really wanted to like these books. Really. I don’t like to dislike a book and I certainly don’t like to hate a book…or anything for that matter. I give books every possible chance for me to love them and many books that I read I absolutely adore. I’m liberal by personality2, so keeping an open mind and refusing to judge a book before I read it is simply what I’ve always done. I. Tried. Really. Really. Hard. To find SOMETHING, ANYTHING nice to say about these three books. I just can’t. I couldn’t even make myself read them all the way from start to finish.

In fact, I stopped reading at all. I walked away from the internet. I went on a digital fast and detoxed negativity. Even other books lost their appeal. These books sat in my library crate since the first evening I walked home and spent a couple of hours on the porch perusing them. Ultimately, though, I forced myself out of avoidance and into gleaning what I could from the experience. I still wanted to give them as much of a chance as possible. (If you don’t, please feel free to skip down to the part marked To End On a Positive Note!)

So, Why Are These Books “Challenged”?

Tricks

Back to Tricks (#5 on the Most Challenged List). Tricks is by author Ellen Hopkins. I’m fairly dumbfounded how this book is considered “teen” other than that it involves the grooming and prostitution of a teen, in this case, a homage to the author’s daughter, purportedly, who turned tricks for drugs. I’d really like to give an example of the writing, but I don’t want to write or re-type smut, frankly speaking. It’s not even good smut. It’s mind-numbingly dumb bits of run-on middle-school mentality on highly over-sexualized and arguably diabolical topics.

One example of a poem (?) in the book involves an older man (the man who grooms her into being a prostitute) taking her (15 year old) on a drive to the beach to take erotic pictures of her, while giving her medication/drugs to calm her nerves.

I heard that Penthouse and Playboy used to have engaging stories and articles…at least, that’s how the excuse went. No such claims of that can be made here, in my opinion. The best thing I can say about it is that at least it is somewhat visually non-monotonous by “clever” use of various types of indentation, which seems to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the content or cadence, but rather visual alignment of text. I would happily welcome a more enlightened viewpoint. Or not.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Tying for #6, Me And Earl And the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews could be a really great book. I don’t know. Every page I turned to had so much raunchy language and concepts I had to put it down and walk away. One would never confuse me with a “bible-thumper”, but even I was appalled at the sheer number of times “the Lord’s name was taken in vain” along with the profanity, manipulation, lying, and emotionalism. Is it too much to ask for nuance, class, and a vocabulary that wouldn’t make the most staunch atheist-sailor blush?! Yuck.

Flamer

Finally, #10, to be fair, was in the Adult Graphic Novel section. Yes, you read that right: the ADULT GRAPHIC NOVEL section. It’s certainly not my cup of tea, but though they used my tax dollars on this garbage, I actually have the least problem with it. In fact, if you happen to be in to the diabolical, you might actually enjoy the book. I’m not.

So, I flipped the pages—it’s graphic (in more ways than one), so you can get quite a lot simply flipping through as the illustrations are not complex and there’s not much dialogue. Notably, despite there not being much dialogue, there is a reference to ‘not drop the soap’ and the accompanying illustration…I kid you not. I felt alternately horrified and ashamed even spending the time I did on the book. I’m hardly what one might call a prude, but it just felt dirty and wrong to look pictures which once seen, cannot be unseen. There are so many beautiful things I could have been doing with that time. I repeat: if this were all I knew of books, I would never have learned to love reading!

So, why are these books being challenged? Well, these books are not exactly To Kill a Mockingbird, no matter how much of an attempt there is to conflate. They’re not even Lolita, which one might argue is a literary masterpiece in all three separate languages the author himself wrote it in, topic notwithstanding.

No, to put it in one of the author’s terms: the books simply “suck” and I would posit are horrible literature regardless of how accepting you are of the subject matter. Let us set aside whether or not the books are appropriate or inappropriate for a minute: in my own personal experience, these books are awful literature which had a profoundly negative effect on me to the point where I withdrew from the world and stopped reading even good literature. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone and pity the trees that died in their making.

My takeaway from the “banned” book list by the American Library Association is one of consternation. The ALA renamed the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award to the Children’s Literature Legacy Award because they claimed stating a “lived experience” was anti-American Indian and Anti-Black (though she is entirely positive and credits the one mention of a black person—a doctor—with saving her and her family’s lives). Yet those books are filled with grit and perseverance in overcoming hardship, character development, and seeing the world through the eyes of a pioneer child. Aren’t we supposed to embrace the perspectives of others through their “lived experience”?

These three books, though, were not the books I was actually originally looking to find. I had to laboriously wait until the next day to get all on the list I found—namely the books being discussed in the Supreme Court Case. So, let us press on…

LGBTQ+ Picture Story Books

The specific books which are at the root of the Supreme Court case, as per some of the many articles on the case (one such by CNN), include the following books:

Intersection Allies: We Make Room For All

This book comes replete with everything one needs to know about incorporating “woke” ideology into your toddler’s daily life. Included are a Forward, A Letter To Grown-Ups, explanatory pages on “What Is Intersectionality?”, an invitation to a page by page discussion guide, extensive book notes that tell you what to think and what questions to ask), intersectional biographies of the authors/illustrator, a list of (adult) books which inspired this (picture story book), and Acknowledgments, namely to “all the feminists who inspired the book, especially our colleagues and mentors at the University of Southern California”…a.k.a. academics and university professors.

Phew. That’s a LOT of baggage to come with a children’s picture book and that’s not even including WHAT it says and the definitiveness of information.

Something quite noticeable, is that though they claim a desire to promote inclusion and diversity, there is a distinct lack of men and boys. Single mothers are not hard to find. To be fair, they do include a (“non-binary”) girl who doesn’t like girly things and uses the boys’ bathroom in order to feel safe. There are boys in the boys bathroom when the non-binary girl is there washing her hands, so it’s not like there are no boys in the book. There might be a couple of men (?) who are Dakota (Indian) as well. Maybe an (illegal) immigrant father? The pictures are a bit vague…

There is constant lecturing and posturing, though in comparison to Tricks or Me and Earl, the vocabulary and poetry is practically Shakespeare in comparison.

To note, for anyone who has never had children or worked with children, those who are below the “age of reason” (an intellectual milestone which develops around the age of 7 years), children will indeed take what they are told as fact. It has long been understood that if one wants to indoctrinate a child into believing ANYTHING AT ALL, one simply need get a child under the age of reason and and they will soak up information as a sponge.3 It is easier to teach them than unteach what has been taught. So, please keep that in mind when listening to the argument “What’s the big deal about exposing children to certain ideas?” EVERYTHING.

From what I see in this book, there is not a single thing here that is not political and ideological indoctrination. If you want to read this to your child, by all means. You have a right as a parent to brain-wash your own child. That this is being used in school curriculum at an age prior to reason in a non-nuanced, "believe THIS” sort of way, I can completely understand why parents are upset.

Love, Violet

This book is a lesbian love story. Yes, you heard me: lesbian love story. It’s a Harlequin novel for toddlers. It comes replete with denial, lies, deceptions, and ultimately requited love between two little girls who become “valentines.” The author makes sure to put in her bio that she’s a lesbian who was also “struck speechless by a crush in preschool”…and the book was paid for by taxpayers from Minnesota.

As a personal aside, I had a parent approach me a few years back and tell me about his daughters’ school’s sex education program which started in Kindergarten. He was alarmed and shared with me both the contents of the curriculum and the effect it was having on his daughters and their friends. The kids were being taught that “Love is Love” and essentially all “love” is the same. So, if you love your friend and she is a girl and you are a girl, then you are lesbians. This was having a profoundly confusing impact upon the children, who, of course, then decided since they had a best friends who were girls and they loved their friends, then they were all lesbians.

It also clearly opens the door for sexual exploitation, pedophilia, and incest. In my opinion, books like these, are wildly inappropriate for children who are taught that there is only one kind of love (and it involves sexual orientation). But, this book was probably the least problematic of all of them…and I was repulsed by the book. I will repeat: I am not a prude—> What consenting adults do in their own house is not something I find my business to judge. My problem lies in involving children in watered down sexual romance. There are so many wonderful, thoughtful, imaginative books out there, why give children something as confusing and conflating as a preschool romance, especially when it involves a holiday most children celebrate (and therefore will undoubtedly associate and remember)?!

Born Ready: The True Story Of a Boy Named Penelope

Right out of the gate, this book picked a fight with me as I would argue that it is NOT a “true” story. It is rather an untrue story and an attack on objective reality.

As the story goes, Penelope, a (girl) who likes Ninjas and doesn’t like stereotyped “girl” clothing, “girl” subjects in school, “girl” haircuts, or “girl” hobbies, throws tantrums and mistreats people because she doesn’t feel heard. Finally, her mom sits down with her and has the following conversation:

Mom: “However you feel is fine, baby. It’s what’s on the inside that matters most. If you feel like a boy, that’s okay.”

Penelope: “No, Mama, I don’t feel like a boy. I AM a boy.”

It goes on from there. Penelope doesn’t want to be a mom; she wants to be a dad. She uses her “ninja powers” to make her mother understand. Finally, ally-mom caves and says, “You are a boy.”

Reality bends to accommodate the girl’s feelings.

Apparently, because her Grandpa G comes from Ghana, they are wiser than most in regard to allyship. (I wonder what Ghanaians would say about “gender isn’t such a big deal”…if this BBC article is anything to go by, I’m not convinced that Ghanaians have the same viewpoint.)

Skipping past the adults giving in to Penelope’s demands, with Mom telling brother he doesn’t have to understand and that it’s about love to accept and tell a lie, and the principal being more than happy to learn from Penelope that Penelope doesn’t just feel like a boy, but is an actual boy, Penelope then goes on to a ninja tournament (for lack of a more accurate description, forgetting about cultural appropriation and all…). She ends up not only fighting a boy bigger and stronger than her, but ultimately because she knows she is a boy, she beats him and wins the gold.

As I said…war on truth and objective reality.

My Rainbow

I don’t even know where to begin with this book, except that if you would like to make a case study in how to be the worst possible mother to your child, this might just be the perfect starting point. The obsession over identity, including what makes her son “special”: his autism, his transgender identity, and his black skin…but what makes him truly special is understanding his need to have his desires in showing himself to be a girl (because cisgender girls can have short hair, but transgender girls cannot) in making him a wig out of rainbow weave so he can be her special rainbow (what in more sensible times would have been called a clown)…oy veh. That’s not even talking about the sister, “their” toy of which can be anything and “theirs” is a hot dog…Seriously? I kid you not.

There are so many ways this story could have been told. This might possibly have been the worst. It reminds me of my favorite line from Devil’s Advocate: “Vanity: my favorite sin.”

Jacob’s New Dress

Again, this story could have been told in a lot of ways that asked interesting questions…though not for this age group, in my opinion. Instead, it certain made the victim-oppressor dichotomy stick out. It also really drives home, yet again, the Devouring Mother archetype prevalent in virtually all of these children’s books. Yet again, in the story we have a child who wants something. And, yet again, we have a mother and teacher who swoop in to make sure the child suffers no bad feelings at getting pushback for his desires.

In this story, Jacob wants to wear a dress and his evil white friend Christopher tells him that boys don’t wear dresses. Jacob goes home and puts on his witch costume from Halloween. (You just cannot make this stuff up! I wonder if he also interprets nightmares….) He finally convinces his mom to help him make a frilly dress…which he proceeds to wear to school and rough and tumble very unladylike on the playground. Ok, to be fair, he plays with a little girl also in a purple dress and also playing rough and tumble.

Side Topic: Why is it that kids are no longer taught how to wear dresses? This became a big problem for me when I taught as I had to “body shame” (as it was called by a parent) little girls not to show their underwear when on stage performing (yes, had a student go full Sharon Stone at a retirement home!), so please forgive my nitpicking this particular topic. Frankly, I don’t care who does or does not wear dresses, but whoever does wear a dress must be taught the rules of wearing a dress. Case in point, if you wear a dress and don’t wear underwear, DON’T do a cartwheel. Oh, things I never thought I’d have to endure as a violin teacher!

Prince & Knight

Ok, so here we have a fairy tale which contorts itself in order to slap you with a narrative right from the start.

“His parents knew that soon, it would be time he took the throne. But with a kingdom so grand, the prince could not rule alone. So, the three of them set out and traveled far and wide, on a quest to find the prince a kind and worthy bride.”

Hold on there, Buttercup. The kingdom is so grand that the prince had to have a bride to help him rule it? No. Actually, in hereditary forms of rule, a prince had to have a bride to have an heir. Without an heir, kingdoms would and did fall into total chaos. An heir brought stability and order. Ok, it didn’t always work out so well. Then again, no system is perfect. But, let’s not let us understand the reason for the past: we have a gay relationship to set up here.

Furthermore, what kind of prince has to go bride shopping with his parents? I get arranged marriages for the sake of alliances and politics. I don’t get arranged shopping for “kind and worthy bride” to rule the country because our son is too much of an idiot to rule a country and pick his own wife without us going with him. This smacks of a modern day fairy tale college campus visits with your parents.

My next two points, I will admit, come directly from being married to a physicist. There is no better way to make my husband cringe and stalk off seething than to totally butcher a physics concept, yet this book manages to do it twice in a row. I’ll spare the details, but needless to say, it involves conflating convex and concave (to be fair, the same mistake was made in Lord of the Flies) and a gravity problem whereby, in reality, the prince would have still died, even if it were a possibility to race to the bottom of the mountain in order to catch him…wearing full plate armour.4

They, of course, go on to get married and live happily ever after. Let us not discuss the historical results of a royal being gay.

The one nice thing I can say, is that, once again, compared to Tricks, the poetry found in this book is practically Shakespearian.

Maiden & Princess

By the same author (and very different illustrator!), we get a warrior princess who doesn’t like the prince because he is more like a brother, but accidentally falls in love with his sister, whom she apparently did not know existed. The two women find each other, forgetting all about marrying off the prince. They dance and kiss and go on adventures with each other, ultimately getting married (if “I do” to prove their love means anything).

Again, despite the book being full on cringe, I applaud the attempts to rhyme and make a coherent and not too grotesquely over-sexualized book. [My standard by this point was fairly low.]

Overall takeaway: Why?

I sit here surrounded by a stack of books and all I keep asking myself is, “Why?!”

Why, when there are so many beautiful, thoughtful, amazing stories out there, must we be having this conversation over what are ultimately trashy, slaps in the face. These books are not meant to stimulate nuanced discussion. They are meant to teach children about LGBTQ+ and woke beliefs about the world. If they ban religion in school (specifically Christianity), then why do they find it acceptable to teach the religion of Woke? And, I welcome the argument that Woke is not a religion.

To End On a More Positive Note:

Honestly, I really don’t like writing about books I don’t like. I’d much rather spend time on what is beautiful and shifts my perspective in remarkable ways. So, I will end with some of the books that pulled me back into appreciate life and literature.

The Black Book of Colors (a picture book in Braille)

This book jumped out at me in the library and I ended up checking it out. Although, in my opinion, it’s written entirely from the perspective of a sighted person (I would love to hear from a blind person or parent of a blind child their response!), I think this book might be a really phenomenal book at actually teaching real compassion and opening up dialogue with little kids about those who are blind. THIS, in my humble opinion, is the kind of book that would teach diversity and inclusion, if that were their actual goal. It is the kind of book that builds empathy and compassion, namely by teaching colors by feeling and description.

I think that for a sighted child, it could very well lead to a better understanding of how those without little or no sight read and navigate. The book contains the Braille alphabet as well as the text in Braille alongside the words. One may try out reading in Braille and gain an appreciation for those who have gained the sensitivities and skill to read it fluently!

One of the things I love about the book is that it is entirely black, with textures and Braille, so even a sighted child may listen to the story, follow along, and feel what is being described.

Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers

This has to be one of my favorite books that I’ve read in a while and it was suggested by someone here on Substack. I honestly cannot believe that I had never heard of the book or read it, but it was a breath of fresh air and counterbalanced all of the negativity from the above books, despite its (spoiler alert) storyline. It is packed with grit, resilience, and determination. And, though the mother shows the same notable tendencies towards over-protection, it is balanced by the father and men, who show how important it is to have strong fathers and men in our children’s lives.

Going along with the DEI theme, the ending gives us insight into the father’s capabilities at reading and understanding his son’s thoughts without words. (No spoilers, you’ll have to read it!) Yet again, if compassion and understanding are what we are striving for in teaching our children about diversity and inclusion, they would do so with books like this one. If that were the goal.

If you like Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder, you will probably love Little Britches. It, too, is autobiographical remembrances of childhood and gives a historical perspective for the time period.

A Little Princess & The Secret Garden

Though I have some reservations about The Secret Garden, I found both of these books by Frances Hodgson Burnett delightful reads and think they provide a perspective fully needed in today’s world. In many ways, what unites every book in this post, is the relationship and results of parenting. Both of these books speak to what happens when children are over-indulged or, likewise, when they are raised to be filled with grace and resilience.

There’s so much good literature in this world that it really shouldn’t have to be about “banning” books. The question lies in how compelling of a story and what one hopes to get out of it. Do we want to sow division by making war on objective reality? Do we want to break down healthy boundaries between children and adults? Do we want our children to embrace or shun virtue and vice?

White Rose Publications

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