and on a more serious (nonlinguistic) note

I just read a little blog/blurb about how parents in some Chicago suburb are protesting one of the books on their ninth graders' summer reading list because of strong language and sexual content. Commenters on the story were some for, some against, this censorship, but one comment in particular about whether or not a 14 year old could "handle" reading such a book got me thinking.

When I was in 8th grade, I read Lord of the Flies in school. Not a "vulgar" book and a classic, and I don't think the kind of book anyone objects to being taught to schoolchildren. But I could not "handle" it. It was so upsetting to me, because the message I took from it was that people, all people, are, at their core, bad. That was not a message I wanted to think about when I was 12 or 13. (D had to read it in school, too, though I think not till sophomore year, and I reread it when he had it in the house. Let me say, my reading was a bit more nuanced the second time around.) Reading something with sexual content or OMG bad words wouldn't have bothered me a bit as a young teenager--in fact, it was a plus--but something with an exceedingly dark view of human nature? No. I was a sensitive little girl, you know.

So then I was thinking about the two books I remember reading the summer after ninth grade when I was fourteen. It was a very tough summer for me, my first bout of real clinical depression, and I read *a lot*. And I read two books that were absolutely my favorites for years after: Dune and The Persian Boy. Both books I reread many years later in adulthood, and lemme say, Dune disappointed, The Persian Boy did not. But what was absolutely mindblowing when reading them as an adult was realizing how certain things in my psyche had to have been implanted there from those two books, and I never would have realized if I hadn't reread. I mean, The Persian Boy, besides being absolutely a classic historical novel, is also an extremely touching gay male love story, and you wouldn't have thought that would have shaped my romantic and psychosexual wiring in any way, but um, yeah. In retrospect, you betcha.

I guess my point being, yeah, what your kids read (or watch or listen to) as young teenagers probably *will* subconsciously influence them in certain ways, but those ways are totally unpredictable and idiosyncratic, and trying to shield them *or* shape them is probably doomed to failure. So feh on censorship.

Oh, yeah. The other book I clearly remember reading the summer I was 14? My Secret Garden. I'm guessing no one gets that one on their summer reading list.

xoxo