4/24/2022 Chapter Book Spotlights: Banned Books

Sasha Wallace
Apr 24, 2022
5 min read

4/24/2022 Chapter Book Spotlights: Banned Books

We live in an increasingly dystopian time. Censorship is alive & well, demonstrated most notably earlier this week in my home state. Headlines were made after Everywhere Babies, a popular board book celebrating adorable, sleepy, open-mouthed, milk-drunk, squishy-faced infants, was castigated. After reading the book this morning, my guess is that the likely culprit is love – at one point, two men appear to be embracing, while in the picture below, it is possible the two women pushing the stroller are a same-sex couple.

I guess no one told these folks that a) banning a book is the quickest way to ensure just about everyone will buy & read it immediately; & b) children are born with a capacity for love & understanding that is only curtailed by outside intervention. If they can watch the ubiquitous TV commercials featuring same-sex couples buying insurance or taking medicine, they can weather a hazy at best picture in a children’s book. The idea that children are these delicate creatures that will be absolutely traumatized upon learning that LGBTQ+ folks exist & have normal family structures is fallacious.

But then, that’s what censorship is about. If done successfully, it takes away the option to be offended, challenged, improved, struck by wonder. Instead of discourse & dissent, ulterior motives & sterile agendas are shoved in like a placeholder. Unfortunately, the very sentiments these advocacy groups seek to prevent us from feeling are those that inevitably, undeniably, lead to learning & growth.

There’s as much irony as there is fear in a society that bans a book about banning books (Fahrenheit 451 is basically the emcee of the banned books party). Even Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss was challenged by a Toronto father who argued that it encouraged violence towards Dads. Goodnight, Moon has been digitally altered to remove cigarettes & ashtrays. Charlotte’s Web is apparently anti-God because it features talking animals. The Giving Tree is misogynistic. The list of grievances goes on & on. Even the 10th edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary was once banned in California. I guess nothing should surprise me anymore, but there is a sadness I can’t shake.

To do my part, this week will spotlight my favorite banned chapter book.

Chapter Book 1

Title: A Separate Peace

Author: John Knowles

Recommended for: Grades 8-11

Basic plot: This book follows a group of boys at a boarding school during the onslaught of WWII. Our protagonist, Gene, commits an unspeakable breach of friendship against his classmate, Phineas. The majority of the novel is spent grappling with that choice, though there are some plotlines that follow students who are not coping well with the prospect of being drafted. Instability is the major theme here.

Why I love it: I call this a time-centric book. Basically, it is a book that holds magic for me mostly because of the applicability of when I read it. My Mom bought me a copy from Borders when I was going through a really difficult period in high school. One of my best friends for years & years had dropped me. I didn’t know why. The reason was cloaked in secrecy. But the loss of her, combined with the confusion & feelings of desertion, felt suffocating to me. I cried a lot. I missed her. I didn’t know how or why our friendship took a turn. I felt like a stranger in a strange land, navigating the slings & arrows of hormones & teen drama without her sage advice, funny jokes, music suggestions & joyful company. Nothing anyone said helped.

So my Mom used a book to reassure me, & it worked. This was the first really dark, gritty novel I ever read. No fantasy, no magic, no romance – there weren’t even female characters in the book. I traded Harlequin for coming-of-age fiction. But this fiction could be factual.

I identified a lot with Phineas. He’s a happy-go-lucky, kind-hearted, well-liked boy who is poised for a great athletic career when a fall from a tree breaks his leg & shatters his dreams forever. He doesn’t get bitter, doesn’t harp on & on about his lot in life, doesn’t assign blame or wish for what might have been. In fact, Finny believes the best in people, even when given the cold, hard facts of betrayal. Maybe he’s ignorant, or maybe he craves obliviousness over reality. Regardless, his innocence enacts a dire cost.

Then there’s Gene. Gene, who is always second best. Gene, who is bright & academically gifted & helps Finny with his assignments. Gene, who keeps his feelings bottled up as tightly as a rationed biscuit in a tin. Gene cares for Finny. They have a mutual respect. But that all changes one day in the branches of a tree.

This book embodies darkness, despair, remorse & too-late vibes. It begins with Gene, visiting the school years later, reminiscing about his childhood there. It ends with a twist that no one saw coming. It is startling & cosmically realistic. After my friend & I reconciled (we had both finished college by that point), I reread this book & interestingly enough felt kinship with Gene the second time around. Now, I truly believe we all vacillate between Finny & Gene during the course of long friendships.

I don’t recommend this book to everyone. I recommend this book to someone who has had their heart broken, who has watched the fire of friendship they tended dutifully turn to ashes in the grate. I recommend this book to moody teenagers & philosophical seniors. I recommend this book to prospective soldiers & fans of Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War.

This book is mean & impulsive & dissenting & unfair, & I love how rare that is nowadays. It was published in 1959 & banned in the ’80s for containing offensive language, but it only contains a few mild curse words, most of which are found in the Bible if we are truly going to split hairs. Interestingly enough, no one has tried to ban it for the death & impulsive choices depicted within, the meltdowns or pseudo-bullying, the codependency & boys-will-be-boys exploits. Priorities, right?

It is thought that Knowles drew upon his own experiences at Phillips-Exeter Academy in New Hampshire when he wrote Phineas, the short story that birthed this novel, which makes the events more chilling & speculative.

Where can you find it? Amazon, eBay, AbeBooks, Thriftbooks, OverDrive (cheapest $0.99 & up, used). It would definitely be at most Barnes & Noble stores. Probably even a well-apportioned Goodwill.

Extension activity: You could go in various directions for this. For starters, you could focus on setting as a springboard, having your kiddo do a deep-dive of boarding schools in literature & how being away from home during one’s transition into adulthood can impact character choices & drive the plot. Ask them to comb through these books/films & find commonalities – What are the strident similarities? When things go wrong, what is the mutual terminus? Dead Poets Society, Looking for Alaska, various Roald Dahl books, Miss Peregrine’s Home series, etc. would be a fount of information.

Or.

You could have them research famous works that involve deception/betrayal by a best friend. How is this a universal theme? Is it possible to be someone’s close confidante & care for them, while also being jealous? Was Gene’s action impulsive, or malicious? Was it criminal? Was it accidental? There’s a lot of psychology they can inject into their response, so I’d give them an essay prompt or poster-board to do so. Perhaps song lyrics would work for inspiration.

In the days of TikTok trends, where I see students go viral on the reg for pushing, outing, belittling, or exposing their “best friends” & such actions are hailed as humorous or sarcastic, this book becomes especially pertinent. If this is what those boys did when no one was looking, what would they possibly do today under the digital microscope?