Just. One. Book. Thoughts and thanks.

 This is the very sweet Natasha Griffin. She came out to Greenville from Portola to pick up some books for Portola High School. Many of our duplicates went home with her. Portola is the only incorporated city in our county and is home to a more diverse (in terms of Latinx) population of students. I hand picked some books that my daughter and I thought the kids would love over there from our overflow.

So I’ve been reading about banned books because you know there are always a few people in every community who start running around like Chicken Little and think the world is going to end because a student read……well anything really.

I’m trying to wrap my head around the violence from the news, and the TV, and the video games where the point is always to shoot something. I’m trying to wrap my head around teen and tween conversations which seem to always conclude with talk about farts and other bodily functions. What I’m trying to say I guess is do people who want things banned—have they ever even talked to their own kids? Been around kids? Listened to pop music? Geez.

So THANK YOU all again because you know what you guys did? You’ve sent me every book that was on the challenged or banned book lists of the last few years. We have every book that’s been challenged some place in the USA. I LOVE THAT.

I mean we all have our thresholds with out kids. My kids haven’t seen some films because I deemed the screenwriting shitty and as a writer I WANT GOOD SCRIPTS AND THE WRITERS PAID. My son sometimes tries to explain that when other kids ask, have you seen that? And my son groans, “No, can’t watch that with my mom around. It has a bad script…”

I remember being a kid and sneaking around “bad” books too. It’s what kids do. Do censors realize that some things just go over kids’ heads and that also it’s a thrill to see a ‘bad’ word on a page?

So, no banning on my part.  Parents get to sign a form at the beginning of the school year stating whether or not their kids can check out books and how far up the ladder of maturity they can go. But we only have 200 kids in about 120 families. It’s not that hard to keep track of stuff.

Meanwhile my 13 year old and my 11 year old are still reading whatever they can get their hands on.

I’m betting if I ban something though, I could probably ensure that every child reads it. Because that’s how bans work.

I used to work in a record store in college. Moms were always coming in FREAKED out that we’d just sold some rap or heavy metal tape to their precious angel.  The parents who went apeshit wound up with kids who listened to that stuff even MORE because it bothered the parents.  The parents who  were okay with it saw their kids move on to other stuff. It’s a time honored tradition really—kids only want what their parents don’t want them to have.

I’d like to take this opportunity to remind Senator Amanda Chase that her hatred of the Eleanor & Park book just helped clinch the deal that every kid in her district will now read it.

Have a good day. Go read something banned.