As you may recall last week, I unknowingly put myself in the crosshairs of the cancel culture crowd when I wrote an article about books with sexual content being increasingly available in school libraries – including elementary schools.
We received several public comments applauding my thoughts, and several public comments stating the opposite. You can read those comments, along with my responses, under the article.
What you didn’t get to see were the supportive emails I received from people who were too afraid to post comments on the site (because they are terrified of the cancel culture mob coming after them). I also received several emails that were very disturbing. More on that below.
Around 90% of the emails (including from parents, teachers, and librarians) thanked me for trying to protect children from pornography in school libraries. However, some people who said they disagreed with me called me anti-gay, anti-trans, and even a white supremacist.
Yep, I can’t make this stuff up! Nowhere in my article did I mention homosexuality, transgenderism, racism, or any of the “sensitive” topics in the news these days. My article simply mentioned SEXUAL CONTENT and I noted two specific examples – books describing sex between teenagers in graphic detail. One of those books (though long, long ago) was in an elementary school library (Kindergarten through 4th Grade). My child was six years old when he brought that book home.
There are worse things available for our children these days. FAR worse. One common theme coming from people contesting my article was that kids can access anything on the Internet now. So, that means we should hand them porn on a silver platter AT SCHOOL? We should interrupt their innocent hours of education away from home by introducing sexual thoughts into their minds? Just because they might find it online at some point??
Here’s the thing – schools have computers with FILTERS. But, there are no filters when these physical books appear on school shelves. And, it is the PARENTS’ responsibility to police their child’s Internet usage at home. (And, many parents – the responsible ones, at least – have filters as well.)
I’m sure many of you have seen the headlines for the book “Lawn Boy.” Several weeks ago, I bought the book.
Here is just one passage from the book:
“Fags don’t pay taxes?”
“No, dumbshit, illegals. And for your information, they’re not normal”
“Mexicans?”
“No, fags.”
What’s normal, then, Nick? Tell me that. Your porn habit? The way you talk about women?”
“Oh, like you don’t watch porn?”
“Actually, no.”
“You’re a liar.”
“What if I told you I touched another guy’s dick?” I said.
“Pff.” Nick waved me off and turned his attention back to his beer.
“What if I told you I sucked it?”
“Will you please just shut up already?”
“I’m dead serious, Nick.”
“Well, I’d say you were a fag.”
“I was ten years old, but it’s true. I put Doug Goble’s dick in my mouth.”
“The real-estate guy?”
“Yeah.”
Nick looked around frantically, “What the fuck are you talking about, Michael?”
“I was in fourth grade. It was no big deal.”
Cringing, Nick held his hands out in front of him in a yield gesture. “Stop.”
“He sucked mine, too.”
Do you want YOUR child reading a book that normalizes child sexual assault? That tells kids it’s okay, at the age of 10, to perform oral sex on a grown man? If you do think that’s okay, YOU NEED HELP!
You know what’s interesting? That nobody online is complaining about the book calling homosexuals “fags,” nor the comments about “Mexicans.” No, the woke folks seem FAR more concerned with getting this obscene (and bigoted!) content into as many children’s hands as possible. Is that upside-down insane or what???
Here’s what I want to know. Why would ANY parent (or any responsible adult, for that matter) think it’s okay to expose their young child to sex scenes and worse under the supervision of someone they may not even know (the school librarian), or under no supervision at all? Not wanting innocent, impressionable children to have access to books with sexual content with zero supervision, with nobody at all knowing what they’re reading, is not bigoted or racist. It’s COMMON SENSE!
And, why would any parent think it’s okay for a book containing sexual content to be available to young children just because a teacher, librarian, or school administrator thought it was okay? Don’t they read the headlines? Do they have any idea how many teachers have been convicted of child sexual abuse over the years? And worse?!?!
Guess what? Many books in school libraries have never even been read by any adult at those schools! Don’t believe me? Here’s a quote from Orange County Public Schools Director of Media Relations Shari Bobinski about a completely different book with obscene material in it: “The School Board was unaware this book was available in school media centers.”
A parent reading from that book at a school board meeting was removed from the meeting for sharing “sexually explicit” content from the book when it was his time to speak. Pretty crazy, huh? It’s too disgusting for a public meeting but it’s just fine to put it in the hands of our children?
That book in particular has a “sensitivity reader” listed on the copyright page and it was published in a foreign country. How did that book get into our schools? And, not just one school!
Here are just two items from that book:
Memorably, I got off once while driving just by rubbing the front of my jeans and imagining getting a blow job.
and
“It really never occurred to you to put something into your vagina, not even a finger?”
The vagina part continued, and got disgusting. Don’t even get me started on implying to kids or teens that it’s okay to masturbate and drive at the same time.
I have several screenshots of drawings from the book that are so offensive that I can’t post them here. If you want to see them, let me know and I’ll send them to you via email.
They include:
- A drawing of the boy masturbating in a car while driving
- A drawing of a naked grown man touching the penis of a boy – and the boy appears to be enjoying it
- A drawing of a girl performing fellacio on a boy
Regarding the same book, the Keller Independent School District was also “unaware of its contents.”
Another book, found in a middle school, had an anal sex scene. After complaints, the school district removed the book “in order to follow their policies of materials review.” That tells me the book was not reviewed before it was put on shelves for middle schoolers.
So, essentially, it’s entirely possible that ALMOST NOBODY is policing what school districts are buying, and handing to our kids.
And, I really, REALLY have to wonder about what AGENDA is in the mind of any adult who wants a child exposed to sex topics at such a young age. There. I just wrote what many of you are wondering, but are too afraid to publicly type or say.
Three members of my immediate and extended family have been the victims of pedophiles and one of them was A TEACHER. Years later, when we were living in Bangor, Maine, we found out that a man who had been convicted of raping two nine-year-old girls (on separate occasions), had gotten out of prison on parole, and had moved into a house directly across the street from a large park that has children in it daily. Worse, he’d petitioned the court to avoid going to therapy after he was released, and he won! Yes, he actually paid an attorney to get him out of court-ordered counseling.
We then fought to enact legislation in that city to prevent pedophiles from living near schools, parks, and daycare centers. The ordinance only targeted the worse of the worst – monsters who had raped a child under the age of 12. When we were collecting signatures for the legislation, we learned that most people thought that it was already a federal or state law to stop child rapists from living near where children congregate. NOPE! Each locale must pass their own ordinance. Does YOUR town have such an ordinance?
After initial overwhelming support by the city council, they changed their tune and the members voted it down. Why? We think there were two reasons. 1. Special interests in the city who were paid by the government to house pedophiles lobbied strongly against the ordinance since some of those rooming houses were NEAR SCHOOLS. Yes, residents had no idea that there were actually rooming houses in Bangor catering to pedophiles. (Are their rooming houses for pedophiles in your town??) 2. We believe they were influenced by pedophiles online who were pretending to be Bangor residents. More on that below.
Not surprisingly, after the city council voted to protect pedophiles instead of children, pedophiles continued to move to Bangor, Maine in droves. One of the reasons we left Bangor in 2011 was because the city council, in voting no on the ordinance, had rolled out the red carpet for pedophiles. The monsters were even being flown and bussed in from other states! Just 28 months later, in 2013, the problem had become so bad that the city council there, using the ordinance that we had paid our attorneys to create two years prior, passed the legislation. The next day, one of the city council members (a newly elected one!) contacted me to thank us for our efforts.
Based on all of that, here’s what I’ve learned over the years:
There is a large, international network of pedophiles who sit behind their computers, trying to change public opinion (and legislation) about their actions. They pretend to be normal people who simply care about the rights of others. They are NOT. Worse, some of the “woke” crowd, having also been bamboozled by these pervs, have jumped on the bandwagon to support the “poor, oppressed individuals.”
Pedophiles now want to become known as “minor attracted people,” and they want to eliminate the stigma behind child rape. Yes, they actually think that, some day, everyone will eventually “accept” that their sick behavior is normal. And, if you look at the way our society is going, they just might be successful if we parents don’t do something NOW to stop the madness.
I personally heard from several pedophiles (via email) when we were fighting to pass that ordinance in Bangor, Maine. Many of them were posting comments under local news articles at that time, and pretending to be Bangor residents. Guess what? Most of them weren’t even in the U.S. They were overseas! I know because I matched up the names in their email signatures with the names under comments on the Bangor Daily News website, and then researched their IP addresses. I told the city council they were being bamboozled by pedophiles in other countries. Most of the people living in Bangor did NOT want child rapists living near places where children spend their days. The city council members did not listen to me. They caved to public pressure (pedophiles pretending to be residents), and they caved to the special interests who were turning a profit by feeding, clothing, and housing pedophiles in that city.
After I posted my article last week, I received several emails from irate individuals who threatened to unsubscribe from WritersWeekly. They called me names and they spewed hatred. Blah blah blah. Heard it all before. Here’s the thing. They were never subscribers to WritersWeekly in the first place. They heard about my article and they came out of the woodwork to try to silence me.
DIDN’T WORK!
So, when you read opinions online from unknown people about controversial subjects, you need to remember that the people so vehemently advocating for abhorrent things may very well simply be persuasive writers with very sick minds.
To quote Texas mom Brandi Burkman:
“Who normalizes sex acts between fourth graders? I’ll tell you who. Pedophiles.”
And, finally, how do books containing these types of graphic language and images even come close to ending up on school shelves? Because some sick person made the choice to market that title to schools (children!) and/or an idiot at the school district made the decision to buy the books sight unseen, and hand them to children – with parents completely unaware of what Johnny and Jill have been exposed to before they even got home from school that day.
People can send me all the hate mail they want but, if any person thinks that this garbage is good for any child, he or she should instead spend their time looking for a therapist.
RELATED
- Keeping Certain Books Out of the Hands of Children is NOT Censorship!
- Do you trust your child’s school librarian?
- Library’s “brazen” Christmas display sparks outrage
- Library “Gifts” And Copyright Harvesting – AUTHOR BEWARE! By Heather Vallance
- How to Make Money Writing for School Library Publishers! by John Riddle
- Six Firms That Hire Freelancers to Teach Online! Homeschoolers Need YOU! By Stephanie Marshall Ward
Got questions about Print On Demand and Self-publishing? Ask Angela Hoy.
About The Author
Angela Hoy is the publisher of WritersWeekly.com, the author of 19 books, and the co-owner of BookLocker.com (one of the original POD publishers that still gets books to market in less than a month), PubPreppers.com (print and ebook design for authors who truly want to self-publish), and Abuzz Press (the publishing co-op that charges no setup fees).
Angela has lived and traveled across the U.S. with her kids in an RV, settled in a river-side home in Bradenton, FL, and lived on a 52 ft Irwin sailboat. Angela now resides on a mountaintop in Northwest Georgia, where she plans to spend the rest of her days bird watching, gardening, hiking, and taking in all of the amazing sunrises.
WritersWeekly.com - the free marketing ezine for writers, which features new paying markets and freelance job listings every Wednesday.
BookLocker.com - According to attorney Mark Levine, author of The Fine Print, BookLocker is: "As close to perfection as you're going to find in the world of ebook and POD publishing. The ebook royalties are the highest I've ever seen, and the print royalties are better than average. BookLocker understands what new authors experience, and have put together a package that is the best in the business. You can't go wrong here. Plus, they're selective and won't publish any manuscript just because it's accompanied by a check. Also, the web site is well trafficked. If you can find a POD or epublisher with as much integrity and dedication to selling authors' books, but with lower POD publishing fees, please let me know."
Abuzz Press offers FAST and FREE book publication, but only accepts a small percentage of submissions, and only works with U.S. authors.
PubPreppers.com - "We Prep, You Publish!" Print and ebook design for authors who truly want to self-publish. Offers formatting and design services only, and then provides simple instructions for authors on where to sign up to have the print and ebook editions printed/listed/sold. Cut out the middle man. Keep 100% of what bookstores pay for your book!
Angela's POD Secrets Revealed Series can be found HERE.
Have a POD Book with another publisher? See if BookLocker can give you a better deal. (BookLocker offers "disgruntled author discounts" to those who want to move from other POD services.)
See BookLocker's publishing packages HERE.
ANGELA ON TWITTER https://twitter.com/AngelaHoy
BOOKLOCKER ON FACEBOOK - Provides links to free excerpts!
https://www.facebook.com/booklockerbooks
ANGELA ON FACEBOOK
https://www.facebook.com/angela.hoy.750
ANGELA ON LINKEDIN
https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelahoy/
Angela is the creator of the Original 24-Hour Short Story Contest!
https://24hourshortstorycontest.com/
Read More Of Angela's Articles HERE
33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters
I admire any writer who wants to tackle a blind character. But so many writers take up this challenge and FAIL. They research blindness by reading other fiction books, by observing their blind colleagues and acquaintances, and by tying on a blindfold and pretending to be blind themselves.
I understand the challenges your characters face, their triumphs, their hopes and their fears, because I've lived them. I work with people who have varying degrees of blindness every day, so I've seen every challenge, every situation you could imagine.
Let me share my knowledge to improve your writing. You can create blind characters that readers will fall in love with.
~Stephanie Green
7.625 STRATEGIES IN EVERY BEST-SELLER - Revised and Expanded Edition
At this moment, thousands of would-be authors are slaving away on their keyboards, dreaming of literary success. But their efforts won’t count for much. Of all those manuscripts, trade book editors will sign up only a slim fraction.
And of those titles--ones that that editors paid thousands of dollars to contract, print and publicize--an unhealthy percentage never sell enough copies to earn back their advances. Two years later, most will be out of print!
Acquisition Editor Tam Mossman shares seven essentials every book needs to stay in print, and sell!
Read more here:
https://writersweekly.com/books/5635.html
Congratulations Angela. I read your article with great interest and some revulsion. I also read some of the subsequent readers’ comments and conversations between you and your commentators, and I agree wholeheartedly with your views on the matter. It is unthinkable that today school libraries are not pre-examining the children’s reading material. It is appalling that children are exposed to the garbage, as you have described.
I cannot stomach the thought of a child of ten years absorbing the type of sexuality outlined in your article and not envisaging the resulting damage these types of literature do to that child’s mental and sexual development. I feel that parents have the right to oversee their children’s reading material and object whenever they encounter any unsavory reading matter. The relevant authorities must afford libraries the funding to allow competent evaluation of all the books placed on their shelves for children’s education and reading pleasure.
I cannot entirely agree, though, with generally censuring literature just because it offends the sensitivities of some parents or causes embarrassment to those in power. I disagree with the censorship of reading material in general. It reminds me of the many “book-burnings” of antiquity in the form of shattered clay tablets, the destruction of written knowledge in the middle ages, pre-and post-WW2, and even in the twenty-first Century. These actions seem to have been based on ignorance and despotic control of whole populations and not on rational thinking. The destruction of the great library of Alexandria, Egypt, around 48 BCE, comes to mind, and the numerous court cases and book-burnings in the 20th Century USA against the teaching of evolution instead of creationism. In Iran, there was the Satanic Verses controversy where the authorities placed a fatwa on an author’s life. Each time something like this happens, humanity loses much valuable history and knowledge.
However, we must draw the line when it comes to influences on our children’s minds. In this regard, therefore, I do applaud and thank you for your courageous stand on the principle of protecting children from “adult-type” literature in school libraries. I earnestly demand that the library officials think of possible damage to the children’s mental health and scrutinize more carefully the literature they allow in their school libraries in the future.
More evil goes on in early public education than I can say. Some of it is said to be for the good of control over young children, but it is abuse of young minds. I have known teachers to quit out of refusal to be involved. I have homeschooled ever since discovering the issues for myself years ago. I am appalled, but not surprised by what you have come up against. It continues the pattern of disregard for any who can not defend themselves. It is a battle simply to explain what is Family Friendly (okay for kids to view too) online. I am so proud of you and all you have done in defense of children! Chipper Cheer!
I support you in your efforts to protect children Angela!
COMMENT RECEIVED BY EMAIL:
Thank you for your courage and speaking up! I have long believed exactly what you said—that weirdos and perverts have effectively used the Internet to push their viewpoints and make it sound like many people hold their viewpoints (they create several accounts).
R.S.
COMMENT SUBMITTED BY EMAIL:
Your article on pedophiles was great, Angela.
We live in Bradenton, Florida, and our local sheriff’s office website has a section on sex offenders and pedophiles. The system searches the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) Sexual Offenders and Predators database. You need only input your address, then set a radius search (1-5 miles), and the locations of the predators appear as a picture of a house.
If you click on the house icon, the names, addresses, and photos of the sex offender or pedophile show up. There is also an option for notification via email when an offender moves within your radius. The database is something I feel every state should have and every citizen be able to access.
Our community has many children, and we live less than a half-mile from a middle school. As our Homeowners Association volunteer president, I sent the information, including the link, to every homeowner via email. I also had the link posted on our community website.
You could imagine my surprise when I began receiving emails demanding that I remove the link for the website. Some of the comments were, “It’s an illness, and they can’t help themselves.” “You’re punishing these poor people a second time.” Some even said that most child sex offenses were not committed by pedophiles but by so-called “normal” people.
When I compared the email addresses to those on file for the community, only three out of the seventy-five emails were from a resident. I have no idea how the others obtained my email address.
-A.B.
Thanks Angela for writing this article.
Immediately I saw the title, I thought it was a satire piece. You almost never see someone defending decency in a major publication like WritersWeekly. But then, I haven’t read many of your articles.
Will definitely be following your work closely now. Bravo!
Welcome to the family, Ella! 🙂
Angela
It would be interesting to form a boycott of some sort against the publishers of these sexually explicit materials aimed at children.
PS did you know that the BBC, one of the largest media networks in the world, has a statue in front supposedly of Prospero and Ariel. In actual fact, it is and old man in a gown, with a naked boy of about 6 or 8, whose hands he is holding in what seems a restraining manner. The statue was created by the sculptor Eric Gill. Gill’s personal diaries reveal incestuous child sex abuse of his two eldest teenage daughters, incestuous relationships with his sisters, and sexual acts on his dog; he was known for his sexual perversions. The BBC have refused to remove the statue. The BBC has been rife with sexual abusers whom it protected from the law, including its worst case, Jimmy Saville.
I had NO idea, Jo! Wow…. 🙁
According to Wikipedia, that sculptor abused his sisters, daughters, AND his dog:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Gill
Folks can read about Jimmy Saville here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile_sexual_abuse_scandal
Angela
Hang in there, Angela. Your courage in the face of abominations is admirable. I live in Spain, but this scourge needs to be talked about and fought however it can be, everywhere in the world. I have just started a blog, and my first entry will link to this article. We need to speak out; the woke brigade are dangerous, and thanks to people like you and great podcasters who broadcast what they believe, more and more people are realising what’s going on – and has been for years. It’s an insidious invasion that has been allowed by idiots who think the rights of perverts come before the rights of our children to be protected – and that will NEVER be okay. The ancient cultures that at one time or another ruled their worlds came to an end when they went down the roads of sexual dissipation, leading to total breakdown of morality, and today’s world is going the same way. We are ruled by perverts – in government and in other positions of power, the world over. From the Jimmy Savilles of this world, to the immoralities of the very top rulers, in govt and in the cabals, the judges on the bench… sexual and moral corruption has been allowed to flourish, and the more there are, the more power they have. At one time paedophiles would have been afraid to show their faces, let alone their stance, to the world; now they are permitted to do so, because their like are everywhere, battering us all with guilt and “human rights”. but the victims and potential victims have no rights. Keep fighting, Angela, we need people like you. And yes, as a child I was the victim of paedophiles. They learn to spot potential targets. And that was long before the internet. Just in those days they knew if they were found out, someone would either kill them or get them jailed for life. Now their judges have reduces their sentences sometimes to nothing at all. Poor paedophiles, indeed. Rapists, murderers, monsters, and anyone defending their “rights” is an accessory. Simple as.
“It’s an insidious invasion that has been allowed by idiots who think the rights of perverts come before the rights of our children to be protected – and that will NEVER be okay.”
EXACTLY!! Please send me the link to your blog when you get it going.
BRAVO, JO!!!
Angela
Angela, you offer services to writers and potential writers, but I really wish you would not politicize those services. A book publisher attacking books – really?
Of course, porn shouldn’t be in school libraries, but teachers, librarians, and school administrators are not the problem. Neither are “cancel culture” or “woke” culture. The problem is a culture that values money over everything else. Children are left unsupervised at home or in daycare or in after school programs. Parents who don’t or can’t properly supervise their kids feel guilty and blame the schools.
You trust school computer filters, but not professionally educated and trained school faculty. Why? Filters can be hacked and kids find ways around them. The majority of school faculty are good people who have children’s best interests at heart. They are not pedophiles any more than most parents or clergy are pedophiles. Unfortunately, pedophiles can be found in all walks of life.
I really wish parents would be more concerned about their child’s health (many students eat pop tarts for breakfast and are sleep-deprived), school shootings, the trauma caused by active shooter drills, violent video games, and teen pregnancy as much as they are concerned about banning books or teaching complete and accurate history. Instead of attending school board meetings to tell teachers how to teach, parents should request and attend parent-teacher conferences to be really actively involved in their child’s education. Speaking as a retired high school teacher, very few parents these days request or attend parent-teacher conferences.
“You trust school computer filters, but not professionally educated and trained school faculty. Why?”
Do you read the headlines? And, literally anybody can get a job teaching nowadays. During the pandemic, they were (and still are) letting non-degreed individuals teach classes. Cafeteria workers. Bus drivers. Unemployed parents…
In some schools, you don’t even need a degree in education to become a teacher:
https://www.teachaway.com/blog/can-you-become-teacher-without-teaching-degree
And, then I woke up this morning to this headline:
Tennessee woman accused of raping at least 9 students; community shaken by allegations
https://www.foxnews.com/us/tennessee-woman-rape-students-community-high-school-teens
And, I guess you missed the story about the teacher who was just sentenced to 41 years for feeding her student semen-laden cupcakes?
https://nypost.com/2022/02/20/ex-teacher-who-fed-students-semen-laced-cupcakes-sentenced-to-41-years/
One of my relatives was molested BY A TEACHER. If that happened to your family member, you’d have a completely different view of what’s happening in our world right now.
Finally, you wrote, “…you offer services to writers and potential writers, but I really wish you would not politicize those services. A book publisher attacking books – really?”
So, you want me to sit back and watch our nation’s children have their minds filled with the kinds of garbage included in my article? And, be taught that pedophilia is okay?
Not a chance, lady. You can sit in your recliner and “trust” people all you want if that makes you feel good. As a mother of six and a grandmother of four, I will not be silenced.
Angela
I read your article. I admire your courage. So many are afraid to speak out against immorality. We can’t have a civil debate. Secularists don’t want to acknowledge the difference between right and wrong. For sex—anything goes—even if it harms children.
You made me think—like you; I feel strongly about many issues, but I haven’t picked up my pen. You set an example for us. And I have to be more of a doer and less of a talker. Thank you!
Dear Angela,
Thank you for your article on some of what is in school libraries. That took courage to write and to publish. I applaud you and hope that the article will alert many parents and protect children from exploitation because of what they find in their school library.
Angela, I disagree with some of your beliefs, such as the covid vaccinations, but WOW! keep preaching what you’re preaching about the sexual content of books available to young children in their own school libraries. It’s horrifying. One of my husband’s cousins was preyed upon when they were both in school together…many, many years ago. It must be a problem that is thousands of years old. We must protect the children, not promote that garbage as being NORMAL. So keep writing about it. So sorry you got awful emails. I sometimes wonder about the presence of a Personal Evil out there….
With admiration,
I so admire you for standing up–bill kaliher
I have a few thoughts on all of this after reading both your posts. My big question is why elementary schools/middle schools buying books that are for older teens? Someone dropped the ball there. However, I do take issue with these books being defined as ‘pornography’. They do not match the legal definition. By labeling a book as pornography we risk opening up a can of works that harken back to Comstock laws. Those Comstock laws also banned materials to teach sexual education. This is another genre of books that is under fire for being graphic and pornographic and being removed from schools. That is problematic because while schools are required to teach sex ed, they are under no obligation to teach anything accurate. Kids need age approperate educational material, not have that material labeld as ‘pornography’. There needs to be a separation of books by age in all libraries, there also needs to be someone in charge of verifying that the recommended age range on a book is correct and that books shouldn’t just be bought for school libraries based on a recommeded list or the phase of the moon or however they choose books, because at this point, there seems to be some kind of randomness to the process.
The current wave of book bannings is basically removing everything that does not meet the ideals of the conservative white protestant. LBGTQ+ anything…ban it. Writen by a black author…ban it. Mention slavery….ban it because that is very obviously Critical Race Theory. Book mentions sex (even in an educational aspect)…ban it.
We need to teach accurate and truthful history. We need to put proper sex in the hands of children. We need children exposed to racial issues where they know what is and is not acceptable and can understand why their minority friend’s life is the way it is. LGBTQ+ kids need to see representation – gay teenagers are more than 50% more likely to commit suicide and end up homeless. All of this needs to be age appropertate.
Where I agree with you that the book that you gave excerpts of does not belong in the hands of the age group is was ending up in, I do not agree with labeling it pornography. If it were go be challenged in a court of law, it would not pass. There is also the problem of people who do not agree with being gay calling LGBTQ+ books pornography as well as others calling sex ed books with pictures pornography. Words having meaning and we need to be careful how we choose to label something. I say this as an English major, a parent, and someone who’s reading was never monitored. I never felt the need to monitor what my kids were reading because they descresioned themselves. If something made them uncomfortable they didn’t read it. The more that we, as adults, say “this book should be banned” or “this YA book is pornography” the want to seek out those books by our children is going to increase because it’s forbidden. When it comes to things like this, kids will find a way to get their hands on the books. It’s a double edged sword really with no proper solution other than those in charge of buying books making sure they are for the age group they say they are, and if there is a wide age range in a school, making sure the books are properly segregated and don’t share shelves. If something is in question parents need to parent and explain why that book isn’t age approperate without making a huge deal out of it where it becomes a huge deal for a kid to get their hands on contraband.
I don’t know why people keep mentioning LGBTQ and racism. Again, my articles were NOT about those books.
Pornography: the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement
-Merriam Website
Yep, the books I purchased and reviewed definitely fit that description. You didn’t really think I was going to put those things online, did you?
You wrote: The more that we, as adults, say “this book should be banned” or “this YA book is pornography” the want to seek out those books by our children is going to increase because it’s forbidden.
Here’s the thing… If those books were never put in school libraries in the first place, there wouldn’t be any controversy. The kids would even know about them.
Angela
This is one of the main reasons schools and libraries don’t want to buy self-published books. Traditional publishers weed that stuff out and/or put it in the proper age groups, if they even accept it. Self-publishing puts a new angle on things. Nobody is policing those. Allowing self-published books in a library means the librarian (or somebody) HAS to read every book that comes in, just to be sure of the content. They should read it first, anyway, but for the most part, they trust the publishers to do their jobs. A lot of self-publishers don’t understand the reasons for the rules, so they break them, thinking it’s no big deal. (There are serious, valid reasons for not allowing such stuff in books for younger kids.) Some hybrid and vanity press publishers also ignore the issue. All this ignoring of the “rules” is causing problems for self-publishers who do follow them. If self-publishers could find a way to police themselves a little better, schools and public libraries might trust them more. That would be a good thing. But how can we make that happen?
Gonna have to disagree with you. The child-inappropriate books making the biggest headlines are all traditionally published.
Angela
Bravo, Angela. Unless we all start to take decisive action in this country, we’re going to become Soviet Russia in no time. The woke takeover of our culture is sick, but very powerful. We need more parents at more school board meetings, and more good people running for those school boards. Then we need the school boards to stand up to administrators and teacher unions and the corruption that infests both. I am encouraged to see you take a firm, sensible stand. Please keep it up.