Banned Books Week 2010: An Anti-Censorship Manifesto

By Ellen Hopkins

"If you don't like content in a book, don't read it. If you don't want your child to read a book, take it away. But you do not have the right to decide 'appropriateness' for everyone. What's perhaps not right for one child is necessary to another. Ignorance is no armor. And those whose lives are touched by the issues I write about deserve to know they are not alone." - Ellen Hopkins, "An Anti-Censorship Manifesto".

Ellen Hopkins is the author of many bestselling books such as Crank and Glass. In 2010 Hopkins was "dis-invited" to many speaking engagements such as at a school in Oklahoma, and a Teen Literature Festival in Texas. Soon after she wrote the non-fiction article "Banned Books Week 2010: An Anti-Censorship Manifesto" supporting her books and the things they contained. She gives examples of how her books have inspired readers, and in a ways saved their lives. She also shows how even though her books have deep, mature issues like drugs, abuse and thoughts of suicide, they teach young adult readers valuable lessons too. "But they bring young adult readers a middle-aged author's broader perspective. They show outcomes to choices, offer understanding. And each is infused with hope." 

Throughout the article she uses craft moves that many writers use in order to get her point across. In the beginning she uses the small moment about the woman who approached her after one of her book signings. The small moment really shows how her book inspired the woman to get her life back in shape, and in the end she is graduating high school, 2 years sober (she had a drug addiction). She shows the process of her book being banned, and then in the end showing the other authors joining together and boycotting the Teen Literature Festival. This shows how the authors came together for something they really/genuinely believed in.

Apart from the writing techniques, I strongly agree with Ellen Hopkins. I think she makes many valid points about how people shouldn't deprive people across the nation of a book, just because of their personal opinions/preferences. I also agree that the people who are banning these books aren't actually reading the books and reading the content, but instead skimming through it and picking out the "inappropriate" aspects. For example, in the news video we watched in class, the girl (being interviewed) was challenging the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (a classic book) because on the first couple pages the burning of the bible was mentioned. Maybe if she had kept on reading, that book would have changed her life. I believe (as Hopkins said in the quote above) that just because you have certain opinions about what teens should be reading, doesn't mean that you can judge the appropriateness for others. 

Looking For Alaska

By John Green

In real life and narrative fiction, characters use ice cream or pouring their feelings into a journal to help them cope with hardships that they've been going through, but the teenagers in Looking for Alaska by John Green, use drinking and smoking as coping mechanisms. The students at Culver Creek boarding school have been sent to the school for many reasons, to be taught responsibility, independence, and to mature as people. This can be stressful to teens, they don’t have the support they normally get from their parents, they are having to uproot their normal lives and move to a boarding school were they have to meet new people and make more friends. The students often resort to drinking and smoking to help them with social, academic and personal conflicts.
            As a teenager, kids have stressful lives, between succeeding in school, life at home, their social lives and maturing into the people they will grow up to be. The character the Colonel was dumped by his girlfriend, Sara, he copes by drinking his homemade cocktail, ambrosia (vodka mixed with milk). Also the character Alaska in Looking for Alaska uses drinking to help with the grieving of the death of her mother. It’s even harder for Alaska because her father blamed the death of her mother on Alaska “Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.” Alaska says to the main character Miles (Pudge). Although the author is a little extreme with the portrayal of teenagers drinking and smoking, John Green still shows the readers how some teenagers act in times of remorse.In July of this year my grandma died. I was in utter shock. As a way of coping I would just laze around not doing anything, like my dad on the weekends. I would not think or speak of anyone who reminded me of her, I would be dismissive of any conversations about her, and I would shut anyone out who tried to talk to me about my “feelings”. I seemed like a baby, only sleeping, eating, and crying, not able to speak. Now looking back on what happened, I realize that the best way to get over an issue is to try not to control the situation, but instead to accept and move on. The character Alaska blames herself for her mother’s death “When she cried and told me that she f****d everything up, I knew what she meant.” Pudge says upon hearing the story about Alaska’s mom, instead of grieving about how Alaska should’ve saved her mother, I believe that Alaska should accept that she can’t change the events that happened in the past and move on and make the best of the situation, but instead Alaska is hung up on the past and because she gets so wrapped up in her mom’s death, she kills herself.  I believe that this is the true message that the author sends to the readers by having the characters have to get over the death of Alaska.