I am not a book banner. I have had long drawn out debates with my AP kids . . and my grandmother . . . about the danger of banning books. I extol things like literary merit and push the idea of it being left up to the reader . . . I ask if they have actually read the book they want banned or just the excerpted piece someone presented out of context.
And then Bella brought home a book last year that made me a bit nutty. It was the first in the Magic Tree House set and my red pen was itching to write all over it. I was still reading to her more than she was reading to herself, so I simply edited out all those fragments. I made it past the book and the series improved. She has read several since then and I have no issues with them.
She has brought home many more less than stellar choices from the library, all quite popular, all a bit lacking. I had no fits. While I may introduce her to good books, while I may take more pleasure in discussing an old favorite with her, I don't bad mouth the rest. I don't have to enjoy comics. If she wants to read books about dinosaur facts, that is fine. I want her exploring all kinds of books, getting her own feel for what she likes. Sometimes, it is about reading for fun, reading for silly pleasure like when we read Skippy Jon Jones. I don't expect it to all be from the Newberry shelf.
But today she brought home a Junie B. Jones book. I am sure I am about to trample on someone's favorite childhood series, but that was drivel. I get that a 5 year old was the narrator. I get that 5 year olds have an interesting sense of logic. 5 was only two years ago for Bell. I have not forgotten. However, I am not about to read a book to my kid that uses thinked or runned over and over again. I am a lover of the 5 year old brain - I love Ramona as much now as I did when I first met her. I just cannot handle reading a book that has been so far 1/8th bad grammar. Bell rarely uses words like that, but she says that I shouldn't judge those writers because their mothers weren't English teachers.
Okay. Burning. Banning. That might be a bit of overkill. Maybe I am just having a fit after having graded too many badly written papers. Somewhere my kids learned to speak and write like Junie B. Yes, they are in high school. No, they surely are not still reading Junie B. However, they write like they do still consume her books on a regular basis. I know, I know, this is environmental. When kids grow up with people who have poor grammar, they in turn have poor grammar. But why on earth would we want to purposefully fill their brains with more bad examples? Why aren't there more E.B. Whites and L.M. Montgomeries in the world? What has happened to great kids' literature?
I know there are some writers out there. I know Jen Tucker has a book out. My little sis ought to publish hers. This is a call to arms, a call to enchant the young readers we nurture - we should be making bookworms and bibliophiles of them all, not poor writers in some future sophomore class. Write more good books!
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