My Letter to Mrs. Berner on Why She Should Turn Down Censorship

Mrs. Berner,

I’ve heard parents are lobbying you to censor our library by restricting access to certain, controversial titles. Hopefully, you won’t. Denying kids the basic right to read what they want to read shouldn’t be infringed upon. By censoring books, you may be denying a child the help they need in a hard time. By censoring books, you can’t destroy the issues within them. By censoring books, you’re putting a limit on knowledge.

Some of the books on the shelf that are on the heavier side might, in fact, help some children who are going through the same experiences as the main  character. Ellen Hopkins wrote about an ordeal she had with a troubled girl she met at a book signing in Huffington Post’s Anti-Censorship Manifesto in 2010. This girl was going through metamorphic addiction and when she read Hopkins’s book, Crank, she said she saw herself in those pages and realized she didn’t want to become what the main character had become: a depressed addict whose life was slipping away. So Mrs. Berner, what if that student were a student her at MS 51? This proposed censorship would prevent this girl from having an outlet to Crank and turning her life around. If this censorship passes Mrs. Berner, a girl (or boy) like this could die from an overdose, or, even worse, have their life destroyed by drugs.

Another reason we should keep books that are “challenged” in our library is, we have the case of what are we protecting our children against? Abuse, self-mutilation, suicide, rape, and torture are all part of our world. By keeping them off of the bookshelves, it’s almost like saying “Don’t look at the ugly parts! Pretty! Look at pretty! Our entire life can be pretty! Just read things about pretty!” When John Green’s book The Fault In Our Stars, which explores death and serious illness, got taken off the shelves of the Riverside Unified School District of California, he was quoted as saying “I guess I am both happy and sad. I am happy because apparently people in Riverside, California will never experience mortality since they won’t be reading my book, which is great for them. I am sad because I was really hoping to introduce that human beings die to the children of Riverside, California and thereby crush their dreams of immortality.” Green’s point is that by hiding titles from our children, we’re not destroying the issues or the reality of the issues within the books.

The demographic who wants to strip children of the rights provided to them by the First Amendment to the Constitution claim that songs and movies that mention the same or similar subject matter are required to get “Parental Warning” labels or “R” ratings. So why don’t books have them? To that I could give multiple answers, but I chose this one: books spread knowledge. Ever since the beginning of books, before the printing press, books have been how scientists log findings, how journalists and authors tell stories, how explorers made maps of foreign lands accessible. You should not restrict knowledge, which is why books are “open for all audiences”. Knowledge needs to be spread and censorship doesn’t spread it.

I, personally think that conclusions are redundant and conformist, but Mrs. Cunningham says it’s worth five points of my grade, so I’ll try to make it inspiring. Mrs. Berner, I want you picture a kid walking into the library and he says something like “I want to learn more about suicide because my friends were telling me about this girl who hung herself and it hit me. Do you have any books on the matter?” So think of the universe where the boy doesn’t get the book and think of the universe where he does. This boy can’t get the book he wants because the library’s censored to keep out books like that. These parents think he’ll just go home and forget the entire thing within a week, but you’ve worked with kids so I want you to ask yourself, will he?


Sincerely,
Simeon Bremer