Hey guys! Guess what! I come bearing BREAKING NEWS!
From the desk of Meg Cabot . . . who e-mailed this to me and told me I could tell you:
MEG CABOT HAS BEEN CHALLENGED!
Yes! A parent in a middle school in South Carolina has challenged
Princess Diaries 8 for “embracing immoral and non-traditional values.” Whatever that means! Meg is still getting details . . . but it sounds like the parent in question plans on taking this one all the way home!
CHALLENGED!Congratulations, Meg! Welcome to Crazy Club! I hope to hear more about your adventures!
This is the perfect way to bring me back to a question that I have gotten an awful lot. Namely . . . whatever happened in Bartlesville?
For those of you who are new here, I will give the story in brief.
Back in April, one of my books was removed from a school library in Bartlesville, Oklahoma because of the complaints of one parent. She objected to the fact that my book, The Bermudez Triangle, had homosexual characters and themes. She claimed some things about it that weren’t true . . . like that it was a “sexual free for all.” (An accusation that baffled me for weeks, as there is no sex in the book at all. At least, none that I am aware of. And you would think I would know, right?) I was accused of everything under the sun in this complaint, and was basically summed up as being a disgusting, filthy, no-good human being who seeks to corrupt your soul.
My evil plan had been working perfectly, and I was happy . . . The book was removed from the library shelves. This took place on the quiet, in violation of school policy, and the only reason I knew about it was because the librarian in the school wrote to me and asked for help.
So I tried to help! I called down to Bartlesville every day, trying to reach the members of the committee who removed the book. I e-mailed them. I got nowhere. No one wanted to talk to me! So I thought maybe they would rather talk to YOU.
So I posted their e-mails and YOU wrote to them. Then other authors, like John Green and Meg Cabot and Neil Gaiman, helped by bouncing the link along. And then I started to hear from people in town who wanted to help.
In the end, thanks to everyone’s efforts, it was “realized” that the book was removed in violation of policy. It turns out, you’re not supposed to take books off the shelves and not tell anyone! The issue was reconsidered, and the book was put back up on a special shelf, where it sits, requiring parental permission to take out.
Which is still pathetic. Everyone loses.
In the next few weeks and months, I got a lot of interesting mail about Bartlesville. I got many, many letters of support . . . some from unexpected places. I also got several less-friendly letters telling me that I was a filthy, corrupting, no-good, very bad, etc. etc. I got notes from authors and librarians telling me about their experiences. And I got several really lovely invitations to come down to Bartlesville and visit.
I considered doing this . . . but then I really thought the matter over. And I remembered when this stuff had first come into my consciousness and really started to annoy me . . .
*flashback a few years*
While I was writing and working my way toward my first book deal, I worked as an editor for a few different educational publishing companies. I helped make textbooks and testing materials to be used all around the country. I learned one very important thing in this job (aside from how to creatively use a lot of post it notes to amuse my friends and myself) . . . PEOPLE ARE DUMBING DOWN YOUR BOOKS.
I mean, seriously, seriously dumbing down your books.
Every company I worked for had a set of publishing guidelines, full of things we had to remove or change in textbooks. They went on for pages and pages, and in some cases, quite literally left me with nothing left to include. Some times the things on the Forbidden List were broad (danger, violence), or specific (swimming pools, coffee), or just very strange (“raisin nut delight”).
One day, I got the new list. I felt so sick inside that I had to do something about it. I decided to send it off to Harper’s Magazine, which would publish little snippets of things that were outrageous and weird in the front of each issue. I didn’t hear back from them for months, long after I had finally just given up and quit. One of the editors noticed it in his e-mail and wrote to me, expressing his amazement that these were real instructions from a company that was really making educational materials for hundreds of thousands of students.
I assured him that they were, and that there were a lot more lists like it.
To my unending delight, they
published it. And they gave me $150! Not only was I outing something evil, but I got paid for it! (The version they printed is a much shorter version of the original. They couldn’t fit it all.)
Do you have any idea how hard it is to make reading passages that contain no socioeconomic advantages, disrespectful remarks or actions, or young people challenging or questioning authority? I had to remove every single folk story or fairy tale that ever crossed my desk. Every single one. They were all too scary, too violent, too . . . interesting. I had to remove Shakespeare quotes. And why no rats, spiders, rap music, belching, dice, or aliens?
I’ll tell you why. Because there are people out there who, for whatever reason, object to these things. That’s how the lists get made. People at the publishing company cobble together all of the things that people at large have complained about . . . and make TEXTBOOKS around them. Yes, the stupidest people you can think of are calling the shots. Not being especially well-read or broadminded themselves, they insist that things they don’t like or understand are removed—which, unfortunately, is just about everything. They want you to be just a narrow as they are.
So, flash forward to me a few years later, minding my own business, writing YA books that feature positive homosexual characters . . . AND THE SAME IDIOTS WERE COMING AFTER ME.
The problem can be boiled down to this little nugget: THE STUPIDEST PEOPLE ARE OFTEN THE LOUDEST.
To understand why this is not good, consider this scene. Imagine that you have gone out on a woodland ramble, and in your blissful examination of some flowers, accidentally stepped on a bear trap. Luckily, a passing helicopter scoops you up and deposits you at a local lodge. You stand before a room full of people, pointing at your clamped and bleeding leg.
You: #(^$&#^$&^#$&*^#&*^#&*$^&*^%$&#*^$)()(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
First person: That looks bad. I think we should call 911 and get help.
Second person: Yes. You do that, and I will see if there are any doctors or qualified medical personnel in the lodge.
Third person: And I’ll see if there is a box of medical supplies.
Fourth, and loudest, person: HEY YOU GUYS, I HAVE AN IDEA! MAYBE WE CAN REMOVE THE BEAR TRAP WITH ANOTHER BEAR TRAP! OR WITH A BEAR! YEAH! LET’S GET A BEAR! ONE OF THOSE TALKING ONES!
Person four always has a plan!Naturally, the other people in the lodge would try to distract person four with some pudding so that they could get to the business of getting you a doctor and fixing your leg. No one would go looking for a talking bear just because person four was loud.
But this is EXACTLY what happens with your books. Person four is running the show more often than you know.
And why? Because running schools and libraries . . . is hard work! People who run schools and librarians have to find the money to keep things going. They have to make a lot of hard decisions every day. So it doesn’t help when some nutcase starts hopping up and down on the lawn, screaming, “HEY! HEY! THIS BOOK HAS SPIDERS IN IT! AND I THINK I SEE SEX! I DEMAND YOU TAKE IT AWAY FROM EVERYONE!”
This is the part where I wish I was joking, but am not. I’ve read complaint letters. This is what they often sound like.
So, in order just to keep things moving along, sometimes . . . it’s easier just to take the book away. Or to edit away the spiders. And the swimming pools. And the conflict. And the entire story. And the dinosaurs. And the dice. And the music. And the raisin nut delight. Because person four will NOT SHUT UP until you do. And you won’t be able to do your job and keep the school or library running well. This isn’t to say that there aren’t schools and libraries that fight back. Because LOADS do. But it’s hard. Books are challenged EVERYWHERE. Every school has at least one Person Four
What motivates person four? From what I’ve seen, the majority of people who start campaigns to get books pulled from shelves do so in order to be seen doing something. Anything. As long as you notice them and their self-perceived righteousness.
So . . . there I am, realizing it is happening again. I can’t believe that because one person is saying things about my book, it gets removed. One person who seems to have misread the book in a fairly profound way.
But then I read the accounts in the local paper, and realized that if I did go down to have some kind of debate, it wouldn’t even be about books. It would be an hour of me saying homosexuality isn’t in any way, shape, or form evil, and someone yelling at me that it is. Which sounds . . . really annoying.
It would also give the person who tried to have the book banned the attention she craves.
Also, several people pointed out to me . . . very fairly . . . that when a community has a problem like this, it’s up to that community to fix it.
Bartlesville was a good learning experience for me. I did some stuff right, and some stuff wrong. But that’s how you learn.
And I still believe in making noise . . . because the key seems to be . . . BE LOUD. And BEING LOUD ABOUT BOOK CHALLENGES is one of my major projects of 2008.
Until then . . . I hope you will be reading Princess Diaries 8 and warming up your voices!
And . . . I hope you will continue to send in Suite Scarlett giveaway entries! So far, they are AMAZING.
Labels: Bartlesville, book banning, Meg Cabot, Suite Scarlett
