Aarik Danielsen|Columbia Daily Tribune
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Brian Katcher rebuffs the very idea of a banned book.
This isn't necessarily an act of defiance, though Katcher has earned the right. In 2009, the Moberly-based author published "Almost Perfect," a young adult novel that prominently features a transgender student. The bookquickly became a target for parents and school board members.
In 2020, it landed at No.81 on the American Library Association's list of most banned and challenged books from the previous decade, sandwiched between Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" and Kate Chopin's "Awakening."
Last month, "Almost Perfect" was one of 16 books removed from school libraries in Polk County, Florida, until each title could be further reviewed.
Katcher responded like someone disturbedyet not surprised.
"It was published 13 years ago, and while it was one of the first young adult books to feature a transgender character, there have been dozens of books on the subject that have been published more recently," he wrotein an email.
Offering an educated guess, Katcher noted that "Almost Perfect" receiveda Stonewall Award, bestowed to books that accurately portray and honor the experiences ofthe LGBTQIA+ community;this likely"raised a red flag in someone's Google search," he said.
Still, Katcher believes in the power of books to hold their own withinany war of words.
"The word 'banned'has always amused me," Katcher said."I mean, in a society with freedom of expression, it's impossible to completely ban a book."
With conversation around book bans crescendoing around the country, local authors expressed both affection for challenged titles and consternation over the tone of the discourse itself.
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Where are book challenges coming from?
TheMcMinn County School Board in Tennessee made news last monthby unanimously voting to remove ArtSpiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel "Maus" from its curriculum. The book reframes thedynamics behind the Holocaust using cat-and-mouse characters.
Objections to "Maus" rested upon the use of several swear words and image of a nude woman in portraying suicide, NPR reported.
Closer to home, two students are suing the Wentzville School District for civil rights violations after it removed books by Toni Morrison,Alison Bechdel, Kiese Laymon and others from its libraries.
Shortly after the suit was filed, the school board voted unanimously to keep author Isabel Quintero's "Gabi, a Girl in Pieces," which was challenged on the basis of language and a portrayal of rape, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Removing books from school libraries hinders students from being able "to learn and engage with a diversity of ideas and information, including seeing their own experiences reflected in the books and developing greater understanding of the experiences of others," the students' lawsuit states in part.
Book bans were more novelty than reality —an element relegated to fiction itself —to Alex George until he moved to the United States in 2003. The Columbia novelist, Unbound Book Festival founder and Skylark Bookshop owner grew up in England.
British citizens "are highly dubious about anyone who tries to tell them what they should and should not read or think," he wrote in an email. "There is (to my mind) a healthy skepticism, especially when such efforts come from the government."
The degree of outside influence on British schools is less than in the United States, George said, before hypothesizing on the tangible differences this reality introduces.
"The fact that school boards are elected implicitly brings politics into the equation," which isn't the case in the United Kingdom, he said.
The thorny nature of our political discourse — and the way stakes rise when children are involved in a conversation — only exacerbates matters, George added.
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Banned and beloved books
Growing up, Laura McHugh didn't encounter the same concerns over book-banning that her younger counterparts might today.
"I read whatever I could get my hands on, and books gave me a much broader view of the world and human experience than I could gain from my own life in rural Missouri," the Columbia author wrote in an email. "Back then, adults were busy censoring music and other media, and it never occurred to me as a child that anyone would tell me I couldn't read something."
McHugh took that freedom "for granted" at the time, but the nationally lauded mystery and crime novelist now counts herself "lucky."
"I learned how to be a writer by reading," she said.
McHugh recalls her ninth-grade English teacher passing around a recommended book list; the literary ledger introduced her to the likes ofCarson McCullers, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she said.
Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," banned in Wentzville, provoked a particularly formative experience. The book "let me live in someone else's skin and see the world through different eyes — that's the magic of all good literature," McHugh said.
"While the characters' lives were in some ways profoundly different from my own, I found human connection in these books, and validation that the stories of rural poor folks — maybe even stories like mine — were worth writing about," McHugh added.
The work of women represented on that reading list, especially those writing about what girls and grown women experience,"filled a well inside me after reading so many classics centered around men," McHugh said.
George also holds particular affection for Morrison, as well as other writers whose work shows up on oft-banned or challenged lists. He expressed incredulity that F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" receives a high number of challenges;and John Updike's "Rabbit" novels formed "a real touchstone for me as a writer for their ambition, scope, humanity, honestyand gorgeous language," he added.
What do we do with banned books?
Challenging books often backfires within the wider culture, as Katcher noted. He witnessed sales of "Almost Perfect" increase the week after it was removed in Polk County, Florida.
"The old trope is true: If you want people to read a book, ban it," he said.
"Maus" topped Amazon sales charts after controversy came looking for it, NPR reported. And St. Louis-area booksellers and advocates recentlybanded together to distribute 500 copies of Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," the Post-Dispatch noted.
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Katcher, George and McHugh are all parents — Katcher also works as a librarian — and affirm the responsibility to know and exercise some degree of control over what your kids are reading.
But that right ends when it restricts the books other people's kids can access, all three said independently.
"Librarians will not check out books to your student that you deem objectionable. Teachers will find alternate reading material," Katcher said. "But when you try to decide what other people's kids can read, that's when you've crossed a line."
The conversation around book bans often misses some key points, theauthors affirmed.Bans don't "give our kids any credit at all for being able to work this stuff out for themselves," George said.
And they tend to ignore both hard work on the part of other adults — and the reality of what kids already know, McHugh said.
"The most challenged books are often award-winners that have been extensively vetted by countless librarians, teachersand readers and found to have value," she said.
"Banning books is not about protecting kids from explicit content — kids have already heard and seen worse on the internet, the school bus, or in their own homes, minus the substance and context of a work of literature. It's about ideas that make parents uncomfortable. Those seeking to ban books might benefit the most from reading them."
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731.
