T.C.O.T.R. R.O.T.T.E.N.

Book banning has been making the headlines of late.

"Maus" in Tennessee. "The Bluest Eye" in Missouri. Harry Potter. "Handmaid's Tale." Anything to do with sexuality (especially queer-related). 

While there are some lefties who've wanted to do away with "To Kill a Mockingbird" because it features a white savior -  news you can use: sometimes the savior is white - the efforts to remove books that are objectionable for whatever reason are largely coming from the vociferous, venomous right. 

"Maus" contains profanity, and there's a naked (cartoon) woman depicted. Can't have that. Never mind that "Maus" is a brilliant recounting of the Holocaust, told in ways that are compelling even to non-readers.

"The Bluest Eye" deals with incest and rape. Can't have a high school student find that on the library shelves. (It goes without saying that author Toni Morrison is Black. And her brilliant novel, "Beloved" is unbeloved in plenty of places because it contains sex and violence. It goes without saying: can't have that.)

Harry Potter? All that hocus-pocus, magic spells, witchcraft. Heresy, I tell you!

And who needs to even ask about "Handmaid"? 

Truly, I can see why parents might want to shield young kids (pre-high school) from content that's too explicitly sexual or violent. But if they think that their kids haven't heard the f-bomb, or been exposed to some online raunch, by the time they're in eighth grade, well, the world's got some news for them.

And high schoolers? 

Why should anything that's not pornographic, meretriciously violent, or flagrantly racist, be banned for high school age readers. 

But, no. When you're fighting a cultural war, it's take no prisoners time. 

So kids can't read about anything terrible that's happened to Black folks (or even about small everyday slights). Might make white kids feel bad. They can't read about what growing up gay is like. Might turn a kid queer or - worse - trans. 

The answer: take the offending books off the shelves and slot in - what? Let them read "Silas Marner"? Or better yet, just spend the time that should be devoted to book larnin' cruising the Internet for celebrity gossip, conspiracy theories, and porn.

Some kids aren't taking the waves of book banning lightly. 

A Kutztown (PA) middle schooler created a Teen Banned Book Club to discuss and celebrate challenged stories, discussing both classic novels and current hot topics.

A group of 9 youth, ranging in grades 7 to 11 mostly from the Kutztown area, attended the club’s first meeting held at Firefly Bookstore in Kutztown on Jan. 12.

Joslyn Diffenbaugh, a 14-year-old Kutztown 8th grader, created this club after reading about public outcry to ban books in schools nationwide and locally based on topics of race, gender identity and sexuality.

“I wanted to make sure teens have access to books that they can personally relate to or have interest in and not to let groups in our community dictate what we can and cannot read,” said Joslyn. (Source: The Reading Eagle)

Joslyn formed her club (with the help of her mother) when the local school board started putting the brakes on books that dealt with LGBTQ+ themes.

The club meets are a local indie bookstore. Firefly Bookstore associate Jordan Busits is working with Joslyn to provide support of her efforts.

“We plan to focus on the topics that got each book we will be reading ‘banned,’ both older and more recent books, how they relate to the story and the past and present of our country’s social issues, which we hope will help our members further develop critical thinking skills in regards to how fiction can both be a reflection of the reality of the time it was written as well as how it can affect reality,” said Jordan.

Kudos to Joslyn, to her mom Lisa, and to Firefly's Jordan. Well done!

And kudos to all the kids who've joined the Teen Banned Book Club. 

What an excellent idea.

Of course, while we know that kids are going to be drawn to the forbidden fruit of a banned book, the kids who are participating in the book club are likely the usual suspects: bright kids, readers, nerds, kids from families that have books in the house, families that welcome inquiry and discussion. Kids whose parents are not likely to be showing up at a school board meetings screaming about CRT and masks.

Who's probably not joining the club are the kids who might not read anything if they weren't forced into it. Maybe "Maus" would be the only way they'd learn about the Holocaust. Maybe "The Bluest Eye" might make them think for a minute about what a Black person might experience that's different from their frame of reference.

I grew up a voracious reader. (No choice if you grew up in my family. Reading was second in importance only to religion. And for the Rogers kids, it was reading the stuck with us, not religion.)

Most of what I was reading was pap.

But by the time I was in junior high, I'd spun through the junior high books section, and had had it with books like "Double Date" and "Cherry Ames, Student Nurse." I wanted adult fare, so started reading the more sophisticated books that would now be called YA. "The Diary of Anne Frank." "To Kill a Mockingbird." And I started reading books that were more grown up, too. The monthly books that showed up at home from the Book of the Month Club and the Library Guild. "Marjorie Morningstar." "Mila 18." 

I don't know where it came from, but I was enthralled with a dystopic, post-nuclear novel called "The Hills Were Liars." I think it had a Catholic theme. But it was a grown up book. And I was a kid reading it.

By high school, of course, my reading was fully adult. 

I even read "Lolita," for godssake. 

I'm sure if there'd been a book condemned by the Catholic Church, it would have been verboten in our house. There was something called The Index, that the Church did away with in the mid 1960's, but I don't recall it coming up at all. Or feeling aggrieved that there was something I couldn't read out there. (You want aggrieved, find the seventh grade, 1961 me whose parents let her read "Mockingbird", but wouldn't let her go see the movie "West Side Story.")

When I was in high school, there was a bit of a forbidden fruit moment. When I was a freshman, Sister Josephine decided that no one should be reading "The Catcher in the Rye." She wouldn't actually utter the title. Instead, she mangled the acronym. "T.C.O.T.R.," she hissed at us. "R.O.T.T.E.N."

This, of course, set off a mad scramble to get ahold of "Catcher." Those of us with upper class sisters were in luck. The juniors were reading it. Those with no older sister to mooch a copy off of bee-lined down to Eprhaim's Bookstore in downtown Worcester to pick up a copy. 

I don't recall what the big deal was with "Catcher," but I, of course, fell in love with J.D. Salinger, gobbling up "Franny and Zooey," and "Bananafish." I haven't read Salinger in decades, so I have no idea whether he's stood the test of personal time. But I'm pretty sure that Sister Josephine's fatwa on "Catcher" got me interested in him.

And, while I fear that a lot of kids just plain won't read, I'm hoping that there are a lot more than just the Kutztown kids who are pushing back on this crazy desire to prevent kids from reading books that can and should be important to them.

Frankly, it scares the hell out of me.

What's next, the Proud Boys milling around a pile of banned books with a can of gasoline and a Bic lighter? 

And we know, of course, what history tells us happens next.

As German poet Heinrich Heine presciently wrote in the 1800's: "Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings." Heine was born into an assimilated family of German Jews. He converted to Protestantism. Which, of course, wouldn't have saved him from the ovens. 

Scary.