Hey you teenage and otherwise young-type people,

View my page on YA for Obama

Thanks to Coe Booth for this link. 

John Green, below, asks for our support in preventing Looking for Alaska from being taken out of the curriculum for 11th grade English in a public high school. He explains everything better than I can, but I'd like to add that people often view books for children and teenagers as billboards for behavior. They think, a book in which characters do X (let's say, drink, or have sexual activity) is like a poster saying "hey, this is a good idea!" Or, in some cases, "don't do that, it's a very bad idea and you could DIE."

But books are books. They are long. They are complicated. They are intended for discussion, contemplation, and disagreement. Most of them simultaneously embody different points of views because the characters in them are in conflict with one another, or with themselves.

No one writes books for teenagers because they don't care about teenagers. The people I know who write books for teens (and I know many) all care passionately about creating good literature that speaks to the hearts and minds of young adults. No one has a desire to force an agenda down anyone's throats, much less corrupt the minds of our youth. We just care about our audience and are trying to make good, honest books for them.

Ellen Wittlinger's novel Sandpiper will stay on the shelves in Tuscaloosa.
The article points out:

"After three months of debate and conflict over the book, the board announced Monday that "Sandpiper" would remain on school library shelves because of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that found that students' first amendment rights can be directly affected by the removal of books from a school library."

So even though the school board disapproved of Wittlinger's language, they did not remove the book. Hooray! Insightful commentary on the article at As If! (Authors Supporting Intellectual Freedom) -- from YA novelist Jordan Sonnenblick.

I am thankful for many things, but NOT THIS.

Richie Partington, a wonderful and influential librarian and YA books advocate, was fired from his job for refusing to meet with the District Superintendent of his school until the principal actually read the book that was being banned -- which was The Last Book in the Universe.

Full story at Carrie Jones's site.

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written."
-Oscar Wilde

Well, I am OUT OF IT and missed Banned Books Week. It was Sept 29-Oct 6. But we can still talk about them, right?
Especially since TEEN READ WEEK is this week, and all too often it's books for young readers than get banned. CHeck out the list of most-banned books, here.

I am going to celebrate by reading Sandpiper, by Ellen Wittlinger, a book which was recently challenged. What are you going to read?

What can you do to protect freedom of speech in our country? You can blog about book banning. You can talk to your friends about it. You can go to the library at your school.
Talk to the librarian.
Tell that librarian you're interested in the issue of book banning, and ask if he or she has any stories to tell about books being banned in your community. Then ask that librarian to recommend something good to read, banned or un-.
Librarians love this.
It's their job. They won't mind.

This is my fave banned books week poster, made by Literaticat of Not Your Mother's Book Club for when Chris Crutcher came to talk at Books Inc.

Ellen Wittlinger's novel Sandpiper is under attack in Alabama. Read the story here.

If you've been following the banning of The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson, you might want to sign this petition asking that it not be removed from the shelves. I did.

Oh -- and if you are FROM Bartelsville, OK -- or live near there, there's a separate petition for your community here.

Go here to read about how Maureen Johnson's book The Bermudez Triangle was banned without anyone actually reading it in Bartelsville, OK.

Then go here to find out about what's happening now, what very cool people have helped, and how you can help, too!
Besides buying the book, which is just plain fun.

Here's the letter I wrote to the school board people and cc' to the local paper.

Dear Mr. McCauley,
I am writing to urge you to reconsider your decision to take The Bermudez Triangle off the shelves.

Books are not billboards advocating certain kinds of behavior. They are works of art, designed to be liked, disliked, disagreed with, discussed, and considered. A school teaches students to read critically, and by pulling books off the shelves (especially without even reading them), we send a message to our young people that they are incapable of thinking for themselves. That we have no faith in what we have taught them, and no faith in them to make good decisions.

By taking a book like The Bermudez Triangle off the shelves, you are sending a message to the young people of your community that if they have questions about sexuality, they should not come to you -- or to their parents who support the ban. When you remove a book because you object to its content, you tell the children who look up to you that those topics are unspeakable, and deprive yourself of a chance to impart your values in a discussion. You set up a situation in which a teenager going through adolescence can not confide in his or her elders.

I am the author of four novels for young adults, and many books for young children. I hold a doctorate in English Literature from Columbia University and teach at New York University. I am cc-ing this note to the editor of the Examiner.

I do hope you will reconsider.

Yours Sincerely,

E. Lockhart

It's late at night and I have a few things to just talk about quickly, all unrelated to one another and in no order of importance (and some are more important than others!)

1) I just saw Legally Blonde on Broadway! Bend and snap! It made me want to wear very high heels. If you want to read books about Elle Woods, go visit Natalie Standiford.

2) They are trying to ban my friend Maureen's book. By "they" I mean the Bartlesville Board of Education in Oklahoma, and by "my friend Maureen's book" I mean The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson. Here is Maureen's smart and also hilarious blog on the topic. And here is the As If! (Authors Support Intellectual Freedom) post.
(How can you help? Go buy the book).

3) Dramarama is nominated for BBYA, which is best books for young adults.

4) Coe Booth won the LA Times book award for best young adult novel, for Tyrell! Yay Coe! It is a really great book and it made me laugh and cry.

Okay, time for bed. G'night.