I believe that hiring a librarian who will choose well is pretty much the same as banning certain books. Maybe there are terms that I am not up on and so hiring a librarian that chooses wisely isn’t quite the same, but the end effect is the same. I still believe that if it isn’t available at the school, then the family has many other options for finding books that may not be at the school, including public libraries. I do have an issue with a public library banning books in any way unless the books would be considered pornography which would then make for a different story, but even that has a lot of gray area.

Yes, Mia, she did read them, too. I always read the books my students read and got pretty proficient at skimming — it helps to just get the gist sometimes. (Especially with kids who thought they could summarize a book they hadn’t read and the teacher wouldn’t find out.)

The only books I try to censor are books that are not age appropriate (too violent, too depressing) but I have to say that my daughter is more diligent about self censoring than I am to her.

There have been times when she has picked out a book at the store, only to get halfway through it, and find that it has themes or situations that don’t match with our values. Each time this happened, we talked about it. We used those talks as a learning experience. One of the books was the second in a series that she was looking forward to reading, but after the second book, she decided she didn’t want to finish the series, and I was proud of her decision – but it was a decision that I allowed her to make.

I understand what you’re saying, Linda, but think that common sense and trust in the librarian should prevail. Don’t you think we should hire librarians with good judgement who wouldn’t order books like the ones you mentioned instead of making rules about individual books?

~ Melissa