I had one book challenged during my tenure as a teen librarian, and it was The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler. A father of one of the girls in my Teen Advisory Group approached me at the reference desk in the teen room with a paperback copy of it in his hand. He felt that it was inappropriate, and, if I remember correctly, his problem with Mackler’s book was profanity. I had to admit to him that I hadn’t read it, but I let him know that it was in the collection because it had a lot of positive reviews and it won the Printz honor in 2004 – an endorsement from the Young Adult Library Services Association. I let him know that there is an official process for challenging a book, took his contact information, and told him that I would get back to him immediately.
When I took the book to our library director, she hadn’t read it either, but she gave me some great advice for communicating with the parent. Within a few days, he was back in the library to drop his daughter off for a TAG meeting, and this is the gist of the little speech that I put together for him, with my director’s input:
“First of all, I want to thank you for paying attention to what your daughter is reading. There is a lot of mature content out there in movies, on TV, in videogames, and also in books, that teenagers are being exposed to, and many parents don’t bother to regulate – or to have a conversation with their kid about the messages and values being put out there by popular culture. Ultimately, whether or not she should read this book is a conversation between you and your daughter; it isn’t my place to deny her access to anything, and I should warn you – there is a lot of mature content in this collection. Mixed in with magic, dragons, princesses, superheroes, knitting and biographies, we’ve got sexual exploration, suicide, drug abuse, and a lot of other content that reflects the stuff that is going on in the lives of teenagers. The truth is, with her library card, she can check out books from any section of the library, which means that she also has access to adult materials, and none of us would stop her. Librarians endorse this thing called the ‘freedom to read’, which is kind of like freedom of speech. But, if you would like to challenge this particular book in our collection, I have the official paperwork here, and if you could fill out sections 1-7 with the title, author, publisher, copyright, type of work, grounds for challenge, initiator of challenge, organizations supporting challenge, institution being challenged, and type of institution being challenged, then I will fill in my information as the contact person at the institution and take it to my library director. I can’t guarantee that the book will be removed, but the challenge will be presented to our library board, who will talk it out, and the paperwork will be forwarded to the American Library Association.”
I gave him the form.
He never brought it up again.
His daughter only became more active in TAG.
