John Green is one of my favorite
authors. I feel the need to tell you this because this blog post will be biased
in my deep-rooted love for the way he writes. On Monday a mother, Caroline
Ashlee, launched an attack on a bookstore for placing the “pornographic” John
Green novel Looking for Alaska under
with books that were “aimed for kids”. In the recommended section were books
like Black Beauty and Flat Stanley.
First off, I think that this is
completely being blown out of proportion and find it ridiculous that this mother
is throwing around the word “pornographic” in association with the book’s one
very frank sex scene. What makes me very cross, as Ashlee put it, is the fact
that the woman continues to explain herself as not being a prude, but that the
book is unacceptable and that all the parents that she knows would think the
same. When she was asked how “graphic” the scene was she just stumbled along
saying that it was very graphic and she was absolutely disgusted. “It was
pornography.”
I’m going to get a little bit
snippy at this part because I feel like parents shouldn’t micromanage their
kids literature. Yes, don’t let your 16 year-old read 50 Shades of Grey, but for God sakes let them experience books.
Young adults aren’t stupid, they are aware of sex, having a book that just
frankly puts a sex-scene out there isn’t pornographic – it’s life. Ashlee asks
what the author was playing at writing that novel, he was “playing at” making a
fantastic read that has the ability to change lives. Sheltering teenagers into
the “kid” section of a bookstore because there might be content you find
offensive is ridiculous.
I am and will always be an
advocate for reading at any level. Personally, I think that reading develops an
emotional maturity and awareness of things you would not have in necessarily in
real life. The greatest example I can think of is a personal one. In grade
eight or nine I read the book She’s Come
Undone by Walley Lamb and in it contained some very graphic scenes of sex
and rape. At no point while I was reading this did I think it was pornographic,
I still don’t think it was pornographic. However, it was the first time that I
was exposed to sexual assault and the idea of sex, in reading that I didn’t come
away scarred for life, I didn’t start whoring myself out to the world either. I
gained a series of thoughts on a subject, that before, I knew nothing about.
There is a large difference in
maturity from a child age 12 to a child age 16 and I think labeling a book
pornographic only serves to provide a disservice to anybody with the potential
to read this book or any books by John Green. I will continually advocate that
his books have the ability to change your lives because they are so real. His
books suck you in, chew you up and then spit you back out in a million little
pieces that you put together afterwards, but not the way they were before.
To me, that’s what a great book
needs to do, destroy you. It needs to cripple you and enslave you to its pages
and make you never want to leave it. Great books affect people in a way that
changes who they are, they inspire you to do something, small or large or look
at something a different way. I can honestly say this woman is as mad as a box
of frogs for being disgusted by this book. Sex is not a disgusting thing, neither
is growing up. Eventually you move past the Dr. Seuss books onto books that
deal with real life filled with less rhyming.
Facts taken
from the article Pornographic adult book
accidentally recommended for children at Croydon Waterstone’s.
John Green’s
website for information on his books can be found here:
excellent post and absolutely on point
ReplyDelete