Banned Books Week: Speak

Welcome to Banned Books Week on Fairy Layers! While not all of my selections are strictly fairy tale adaptations, I have made an effort to include books with fairy tales themes and tropes. All of the books selected for BBW (September 25th - October 2nd) have been banned or challenged for various reasons. I hope you enjoy!

Every year around BBW, it seems like there's a big outcry over some book or other. (Anybody else remember The Higher Power of Lucky getting pulled out of circulation by a librarian because of the use of the word "scrotum"?) This year all my blogs and sources are pointing out the debate over Laurie Halse Anderson's book, Speak. Since the original article (linked to in Anderson's blog entry), which scorned the book as "soft pornography," there have been very many responses from the writing community.

Naturally that made me want to read it.

I sat down with it and read it straight through, beginning to end, a rare perfect book. It moved along so smoothly and convincingly that I could not put it down. It did remind me of the worst of my middle school and high school experiences. I was utterly captivated by the main character, Melinda, and her freshman year.

So, as far as this blog is concerned, this isn't strictly (or even loosely) a fairy tale adaptation. And yet... and yet... What are fairy tales but stories to help us understand things? Which this book most certainly is. And there were enough fairy tale references to more than satisfy me--Anderson drew on the dark aspects of some well-known tales, giving her book more than a little Grimm flavor. Even so, she is true to the voice of the American high school student, writing in a fluid, contemporary voice.

I hope you'll read this book. It's a beautiful, truthful book. It's a shame that anyone would find this book offensive--it's not a comfortable read, and yet it deals with one of the harshest realities in our society with uplifting grace and eloquence.

Banned Books Week: Children's and Household Tales

Welcome to Banned Books Week on Fairy Layers! While not all of my selections are strictly fairy tale adaptations, I have made an effort to include books with fairy tales themes and tropes. All of the books selected for BBW (September 25th - October 2nd) have been banned or challenged for various reasons. I hope you enjoy!

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to you to read that book challenges are not a recent phenomenon. Thomas Bowdler made a name for himself by editing Shakespeare into editions that would be considered more suitable for women and children. And the Brothers Grimm, from their first collection of folk tales in 1812, spent the next 7 editions of their book adding and removing stories and content in response to reviews that said that too many of their stories were inappropriate for children, in spite of the collection's name, Children's and Household Tales.

Fortunately, a lot of the editions available today include the original, bloodier and grimmer, versions of the tales.

Even recently, the collection or stories from the collection have continued to be challenged. In 1989, an illustrated edition of Little Red Riding Hood was banned from two school districts--and do you suppose it was because the story was too scary? There was too much symbolism of growing up and predatory sexual circumstances?? The wolf was gay???

Nope.

It was because Little Red was depicted as carrying a bottle of wine to her grandmother.

Banned Books Week: In the Night Kitchen

Welcome to Banned Books Week on Fairy Layers! While not all of my selections are strictly fairy tale adaptations, I have made an effort to include books with fairy tales themes and tropes. All of the books selected for BBW (September 25th - October 2nd) have been banned or challenged for various reasons. I hope you enjoy!

Maurice Sendak is probably best known for his story Where the Wild Things Are, but another of his picture books also won a Caldecott: In the Night Kitchen.

In the Night Kitchen is basically about a boy who helps some bakers get some milk from the milky way and therefore gets cake for breakfast. If you like Sendak's art in Where the Wild Things Are, I think you'd like this one just as well. They are both whimsical fantasy stories about boys who go on temporary adventures, highlighted by imaginative, detailed artwork.

The book has been banned primarily for nudity; when Mickey floats down the stairs he loses his pajamas, and spends most of the rest of the book in a bread-dough outfit, with a brief jaunt into nudity (which is hardly explicit).

Other objections include a concern that the book encourages pedophilia (since there is a naked boy and the three cooks are older men), and that it encourages poor nutrition (since the boy gets to eat cake for breakfast). Umm... yeah... What can I really say about that?

Banned Books Week: His Dark Materials

Welcome to Banned Books Week on Fairy Layers! While not all of my selections are strictly fairy tale adaptations, I have made an effort to include books with fairy tales themes and tropes. All of the books selected for BBW (September 25th - October 2nd) have been banned or challenged for various reasons. I hope you enjoy!

Phillip Pullman's trilogy has certainly had its share of controversy over the years, particularly as the author has spoken out against C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia (I bet he's disgruntled at how often the two series get compared) and against the institution of the Church and organized religion. I think it likely that--although in the books the "Authority" of the church is portrayed as highly negative--a great deal of the controversy surrounding the books comes from Pullman's attitudes and explicit opinions about religion.

I will probably never read these again, but I'm glad I read them, especially since I found the audio version at the library, which is read by the author along with a really excellent cast. It made my long drives quite enjoyable, and I'd recommend the audiobooks in and of themselves if you like to listen to books.

So why will I never read these again? Not because of the religion (which isn't nearly so heavy-handed as people make it out to be) or because of the controversy. Because... they're sad. Satisfying, complete, but sad. (Also: that doesn't make them ban-worthy!)

Comprised of three books, Northern Lights/Golden Compass (depending on where you are); The Subtle Knife; and The Amber Spyglass, these truly are imaginative and adventurous stories, set in a series of worlds tied together and breached at the start of the books. Lyra and Will are two children who may be the only ones who can fix the tears between their worlds. This creative work draws you almost irresistibly into Lyra's world--I challenge you to read these books and not try to figure out how your daemon would appear.

Ironically, the thing that Pullman is most often accused of doing--denying religion and making an "athiest children's series," is one of the things I think his series fails to do. Although the central authority in the book is denied, the concept of "dust" that gathers around the children in the story turns out to be very like the Christian idea of the holy spirit. Oops? I guess you just have to take the art on its own terms, separate from the artist!

The first book was made into a movie in 2008, with some truly dismal box office records, due in part to the Catholic League getting behind a boycott of the movie. Which is a shame, because the casting was stellar, the special effects were top-notch, and the movie was a delicious marvel of steampunk imagery and artwork. The producers probably had an idea that that was a possibility, because they cut out what would probably have been another half hour of film from the end of the story, giving the movie a more satisfactory stopping place (the first two books definitely leave you wanting to keep reading).

All in all, I (East of the Sun, West of the Moon fan that I am) just can't object to a story about a girl riding a polar bear....

Banned Books Week: King and King

Welcome to Banned Books Week on Fairy Layers! While not all of my selections are strictly fairy tale adaptations, I have made an effort to include books with fairy tales themes and tropes. All of the books selected for BBW (September 25th - October 2nd) have been banned or challenged for various reasons. I hope you enjoy!

This is one of the most ruthlessly objected to on my list, which I think is one of the saddest commentaries on our society. King and King, by Linda de Haan, has made the top ten banned books almost every year for the past decade.

This is the simple story of a prince whose time has come: his mother demands that he get married. After several unsatisfactory princesses show up, Princess Madeleine appears with her brother, Prince Lee, and finally the young prince shows an interest--in, as you'll have guessed by now, Prince Lee. (But don't worry, the princess makes off with the page boy, and everyone lives happily ever after!)

I remember reading this and thinking, "Aww, nice." I wasn't overly impressed with the artwork, but it's cheerful and bright. Of course, that's not why it gets banned.

Spare yourself the homophobic amazon.com 1 star reviews, please. They are altogether too depressing to read. That's right, I am banning them.

Banned Books Week: The Witches

Welcome to Banned Books Week on Fairy Layers! While not all of my selections are strictly fairy tale adaptations, I have made an effort to include books with fairy tales themes and tropes. All of the books selected for BBW (September 25th - October 2nd) have been banned or challenged for various reasons. I hope you enjoy!

For today's selection, I have picked a book that is both one of my favorites, and one of the few from my childhood that is still able to scare me: Roald Dahl's The Witches.

The Witches is about a little boy who goes to live with his grandmother after his parents die. In the course of the story, he has several nasty run-ins with witches (the bad kind in Dahl's mythology), ending up as a mouse.

The book is violent, frightening, chaotic -- and hilarious. Like all of Dahl's work for children, it shows an irreverence toward grown-up authority, thumbs its nose at any kind of societal expectations, and tells an imaginative story about a child in a difficult situation. (James and the Giant Peach and Matilda have also both been banned or challenged for encouraging disobedience and being disrespectful to grown-ups.)

While I wouldn't give a blanket recommendation of this book to any child, I think there are a lot of kids who would enjoy this book. It's definitely something you have to decide on a case by case basis: does this particular child still take things very literally? Maybe not time yet. Is this child starting to appreciate the supernatural/fairy tales/humor? Might be time to introduce some Dahl. Certainly I wouldn't think it's worth banning, but there is something in this book to offend just about everybody, if you don't, as Dahl himself put it, "Get a sense of humor."

A film version starring Angelica Houston as the Grand High Witch was produced in 1990. Although it gives the story a happier ending, it's as chilling as the book in many parts. (That bit with the girl trapped in the painting?--Truly creeped me out, especially in the visual movie version.) The movie is very much worth checking out if you are a Dahl fan.

Banned Books Week: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

Welcome to Banned Books Week on Fairy Layers! While not all of my selections are strictly fairy tale adaptations, I have made an effort to include books with fairy tales themes and tropes. All of the books selected for BBW (September 25th - October 2nd) have been banned or challenged for various reasons. I hope you enjoy!

Today's story is called Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, by William Steig.

This Caldecott winner is the story of a little donkey named Sylvester, who likes to collects stones. One day he finds a stone that turns out to be a magical wishing stone.

Unfortunately, Sylvester runs into a lion, and in a panic, he wishes he were a stone. So the pebble falls out of reach, and Sylvester is stuck as a rock. His mom and dad search for him, but of course he's a rock and they don't know about the wishes. A year passes before Sylvester is saved from his predicament and is reunited with his family. It's a lovely story about wishes and family.

So why was it banned?

Apparently, some people objected to the fact that the characters were portrayed as animals. (Have they seen ANY picture books from the last half-century?) And, even worse, the COPS were all PIGS. *gasp* (Never mind that there are non-cop pigs in the story, too.)

Read banned books!