Ban This Book

by Alan Gratz

That means letting them read books that are

too easy for them, or too hard for them. That means letting them read books that challenge them, or do nothing but entertain them. And yes, it means letting students read books with things in them we might disagree with and letting them make up their own minds about things, which is downright scary sometimes. But that’s what good education is all about.”

How do you explain to someone else why a thing matters to you if it doesn’t matter to them? How can you put into words how a book slips inside of you and becomes a part of you so much that your life feels empty without it?

Good books shouldn’t be hidden away. They should be read by as many people as many times as possible. But that wasn’t exactly true. It wasn’t just good books that shouldn’t be hidden away. It was all books. Any books. It didn’t matter what they were about, or whether I liked them, or Mrs. Spencer liked them, or the school board liked them.

I was lucky. My parents would buy me any book I wanted if I asked them to. But not everybody’s parents would do that. Not everybody’s parents could do that. That’s what libraries were for: to make sure that everybody had the same access to the same books everyone else did. That’s why I started the Banned Books Locker Library, and that was why I was going to get every last book Mrs. Spencer had banned. Even Captain Underpants.

You don’t have to spell well or be great at grammar to be a writer, he told us, and you don’t have to be able to draw perfectly to be an artist.

“I think it’s important that libraries be a place where you can find all kinds of books. Good ones, bad ones, funny ones, serious ones. Every person should be free to read whatever they want, whenever they want, and not have to explain to anyone else why we like it, or why we think it’s valuable. I hope you all get a chance to read my books someday.”

And that was it, wasn’t it? All the book challenges, the real ones, were because one person saw a book in a very different way than somebody else. Which was fine. Everybody had the right to interpret any book any way they wanted to. What they couldn’t do then was tell everybody else their interpretation was the only interpretation.

for all the amazing things books can do, they can’t make you into a bad person.”