Today I will not Rant

My son thinks I rant too much in my blog.  I think I do not understand this concept, too much ranting.  How could such a thing be possible?

I spent the weekend among Event People, and it was wonderful.  The gray mare woke on the uncooperative side of her stall Saturday morning, and put in a dressage test best described as pissy (I half expected one of those scathing judges' comments such as "nice braids!" or "boy, I bet she can really jump!") (bless her heart) but she redeemed herself with two very nice jumping rounds.  We finished 3rd in our division.  I was thrilled.  It's actually--I am not making this up--my best finish since 2006.

I should event more often.

Outdoors the sky is grey and gloomy.  The tired horses are grazing, hoping to be ignored.  My beautiful daughter is sick home from school, upstairs, asleep.  My wonderful husband went off to work with  the same head cold, only less severe, and away at college my son has an exam.  It's a bit after 8 am.  I'm on my third load of laundry.  I've started a pot of turkey soup.  The house is tidy and my muscles ache.  It's going to be a really good day for research, because I can do research while lying on the couch.  There's nothing particularly urgent I must do.  Today will be a rant-free day.

Banned Books Week: In Which My Own Book is "Banned"

I put "banned" in quotes because, to my knowledge, none of my books have been publicly banned or challenged.  But the other day I came across a site online that was pretty much dedicated to discussing the complete and total horrid monstrous defamation that is my novel Jefferson's Sons.  It made for interesting reading.

First of all, this was a Catholic site; as far as I could tell, all of the comments were written by Catholics.  A Catholic school had assigned Jefferson's Sons in its seventh-grade reading class, and a parent was outraged, because in a Catholic school she didn't think her child would be forced to read smut defaming the Founding Fathers.  The commenters all agreed, suggesting she homeschool immediately.

Not a single person on the site had actually read the book.

Now, my book is about what it was like to be one of Thomas Jefferson's children with Sally Hemmings.  It's as absolutely historically accurate as I could make it; it's also suitable for fifth-graders.

I promise.  Now, you could take the same facts and write a book that would be suitable for adults only, but I didn't do that.  Yes, Thomas Jefferson had an affair with a black woman.  No, he didn't rape her. (I promise: I wouldn't have believed in the possibility of consent, either, until I did the research.)  Sally Hemmings was Jefferson's wife's half-sister; she was 3/4 white; they began their relationship 5 years after Jefferson's wife died and continued a monogamous relationship for 37 years, until Jefferson himself died.

My book is not about their affair.  It's about being the son of a President, and yet still a slave.  It's about how slavery at the absolute best it could be was still horrible.

The thing that gets me is that the people who have objected to my book have all objected to the idea that Thomas Jefferson had sex with a black woman.  They don't object to Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.  They're okay with Thomas Jefferson bought and sold people, including children.  Thomas Jefferson had a man whipped and "sold so far south his family will never see him again."  (TJ's own words)  Thomas Jefferson reminded one of his overseers that the chief value of young female slaves lay in their ability to "increase capital" by having a baby every year or two.  They're ignorant of the fact that Thomas Jefferson's extravagant lifestyle meant that, at his death, 160 people were sold.  Seven-year-old girls sold apart from their families.  No problem.  Sex with a black woman?  Cover the children's eyes!

Okay, so, I'm on a bit of a rant.  I do that sometimes.  I don't think my book should be banned.  I don't think any book should be banned.  But ESPECIALLY not by people who haven't read it.

P.S. I tried to add a comment to the anti-JS site.  The comments section is moderated; mine was rejected.

P.S. #2 I'm Catholic.

Banned Books Week: A Few Surprises From the Lists

We've all heard that Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Huck Finn have been banned.   But I was surprised to see these books recently challenged:

Nickeled and Dimed:  On Not Getting By In America, by Barbara Ehrenriech.  Challenged but retained on the reading list for a high school AP English class in Pennsylvania, 2012, on the grounds that it was "faddish" and "obscene."  Really?  I'm scratching my head on this one.  My book club read it, but I'd actually come across it long before that.  Ehrenriech goes undercover, attempting to live for several months each on her salary as a Wal-Mart employee, waitress in a diner, and bookstore restocker.  It's an eye-opening look at an underrepresented part of our society, and I struggle to find it faddish, let alone obscene.  Some AP English students absolutely need to read this one.

The Family Book, by Todd Parr.  Banned from an Illinois elementary school library in 2012 because it contained the line, "some families have two moms or two dads."  A brightly illustrated book by an award-winning author/illustrator aimed at preschoolers to grades 2, it also points out that some families have only one parent, some have stepparents, and some children are adopted.  Oh, the horrors!  Of course, some families do have two moms or two dads--let's make those kids feel alienated, shall we?

A Child Called It, by Dave Pelzer.  Challenge still ongoing at a Washington State middle school, on the grounds that it graphically depicts child abuse (physical, not sexual).  When I ran a small library at a girls' group home this was the number one most popular book.  Pelzer overcame a horrific childhood; I think his book gave the girls hope.

The Dirty Cowboy, by Amy Timberlake.  Banned from a Pennsylvania school library in 2012 because it depicts a cartoon cowboy taking his annual bath (his privates are always kept covered).  Cartoons, people. 

It's Perfectly Normal:  A Book About Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health, by Robie Harris.  Stolen from a public library in Maine (2012) because the thief, an adult patron, found it offensive.  This is the book I used when I had the "sex talk" with my children--it's illustrated with cheerful cartoons showing all types of human bodies, and is anatomically frank without being overwhelming.

The Book of Bunny Suicides:  Little Fluffy Rabbits That Just Don't Want to Live Anymore.   Challenged but retained at a high school library in Oregon, 2009.  It's a cartoon book showing bunnies impaling themselves on Darth Vader's light saber, etc.  I've read it; it's hilarious.

The Land, by Mildred Taylor.  Banned from an elementary school in Florida, in 2009, because it contains a "racial epithet."  I'm guessing that's the word "nigger."  This book won the 2002 Coretta Scott King award for the best children's book written by an African-American.  It's a sweeping story of growing up in the South in the early 1900s.  I love Mildred Taylor, and this is my favorite of all of her books.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.  Challenged in the public schools of Culpeper, Virginia, in 2010 on the grounds that it contains sexual material and homosexual themes.  For the life of me, I can't think of a homosexual theme in this book, and the only "sexual" material at all comes when Anne and Peter kiss.  This book had an extraordinary impact on me:  when I came across it, in fifth or sixth grade, I didn't realize it was non-fiction.  I thought it was a novel, and I expected it to end happily.  The words, "Anne's diary ends here" still send a chill through me.

.

Banned Books Week: I Censor Myself, so You Don't Have To

So, my daughter's high school is getting into the censorship act.  Recently they had a pep rally before their big football game against their cross-town rivals.  The students had a cheer that ended, "Hell, yes!"  Administration--who are also getting a bit bolshie about dress code, IMHO--disliked the word "hell," and so urged the students to say, "Oh, yes!"  And when it came time for the cheer, the entire senior class stood up and roared, "FUCK, yes!"

Score one for freedom of expression.

Look, everyone, they're words.  Some of them are stronger or more repugnant than others.  But still just words.

And yet.  I write mostly for middle school students, and that means I censor myself.  If I wrote for high school I could maybe get away with the odd obscenity--but I don't, so I can't.  Exercising my right of free expression by putting an F-bomb in the middle of one of my books would keep my books out of every school in the country and therefore limit sales.

Just ask Polly Horvarth, the author of The Pepins and their Problems, Everything on a Waffle, and several other deliciously quirky middle-grades books.  She's got one called The Canning Season that I particularly like, and that no middle-school teacher I've ever met has even heard of.  Right in the middle of it,  an F-bomb goes off like a hand grenade.  I say so because the word does seem superfluous to me.  I think Polly could have edited it out without changing the meaning of the paragraph, much less the book.  I almost wonder if she put it in as a sort of experiment, to see if that one word would change the life of the book.

I don't have access to her sales figures, but I'd say it has.  I looked the book up on Amazon yesterday.   The editorial reviews rave about it, while all adding in delicate catch-phrases such as "a sprinkling of profanity."  We book reviewers (I am one) try to give book-buyers a gentle warning about bad words, sex, drug use--anything that might set a parent off.  (It never sets the student off.  I have never once heard a child complain that a book had bad words or mature situations.  It's always the parents doing the challenging.)  Meanwhile, the online reader reviews for The Canning Season divide themselves between 4/5 stars, and 1 star, and every single 1-star review gripes about the language.

One F-word, used twice.  Out of perhaps 10,000 words in the novel.  That's 0.02% of the book, and yet--it'll never be used in a middle school classroom.  It'll probably not be carried in a middle school library.  It might not be carried in a public children's library, or a high school one.

I have mixed feelings about this.  I don't think bad words are actually bad.  Lazy, sometimes, but not such a big deal.  But the one time I had a "bad" word--not the F-word, something milder--I ended up taking it out.  It was in my novel Halfway to the Sky, which is a story of family reconciliation along the Appalachian Trail.  It was said by an adult character; it was something she would have said, and it was not really that big of a deal.  But, in the very final round of editing, my editor said, "The word is fine by me, but it'll keep you off the book award lists of every state in the country."

State book award lists are very big for sales.  Make a state list, and nearly every school library in the state will buy multiple copies of your book.  You do understand that writers are paid per copy?  Every book sold mean more money for me.  I knew my editor was right, so I took out the word.  Halfway to the Sky was published in 2001 and is, remarkably, still in print: its very successful run was fueled primarily by school sales, as it's quite often used in classrooms.  Halfway made seven state lists over a span of four years.

A.B. Westrick's novel Brotherhood came out last week.  It's a fascinating account of the early days of the Klu Klux Klan, narrated through the eyes of a young Southern white boy.  Now, it goes without saying that the book doesn't use the word Nigger.  Anne Westrick, like me, is a white woman, and as white writers we don't touch that hate-filled word.  But when I read the book in galleys, it contained a smattering of bad words--not a lot, and not very bad.  (Do you think that the founders of the Klu Klux Klan didn't use bad words?  Really??)  Some of the people who read the galleys thought that the bad words would hinder sales, so Anne took them out.  The only remotely questionable phrase left in the book is "Damn Yankees!"  I don't blame her.  Having read the book, I know she conveyed a remarkable depth of emotion and truth about a difficult subject.  She didn't absolutely need bad words.  But as another writer friend of mine pointed out this week, there's a world of difference between, "Get out of my way," and "Get out of my fucking way."   Want to convey anger mixed with contempt?  That F-word comes in handy.

This isn't a mountain I'm willing to die on.  I'll censor myself for money.  But do regret it a little.  They're just words, and really, the children already know them.

I am From (a Synchroblog)

I am from a place so flat you can feel the earth curve away beneath your feet.
I am from a house full of books
and libraries that smelled like books and
dust and churches smelling of candle-wax.
I am from my Polish grandfather, who worked all his life in mills and taverns
and had the best eye for a horse I have ever known.
I am from strong women with strong hands who taught me courage
in baby steps,
and I am from that courage.  I'm from the dark place where I broke down,
and my husband's hands, holding me up
and my children's laughter.
I'm from the books I've read and written and will write someday
and from the young grey mare who comes when I call
and the long gallops in the swaying grass
the earth curving away beneath her hooves.

read about the She Loves Syncroblog here.

Banned Books Week: Read Them Anyhow

Most of the books on the ALA's list of those challenged (meaning someone attempted to ban them from a community, but lost) or banned were intended to be read by children, from kindergarten through high school.  Most of the challenges centered around issues with language, race, religion, or sex.

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, when my son was in the fourth grade, we got a surprise in the mail:  an Advance Reader Copy of a new novel by one of my son's very favorite writers.  ARCs are pre-publication copies--the book wasn't going to be published for a few months.  However, I share a U.S. editor with the author in question, and said editor had heard my son was a big fan of the author's works.

My son was perfectly capable of reading the book by himself, but, in recognition of the specialness of the occasion, announced that he would let me read it to him.  This would slow us down--no reading ahead was one of our rules--but we would get to enjoy the book together. 

The book's protagonist was nine years old, but the book's intended reading audience skewed a little older--perhaps ages 12 and up.  As we were reading, I began to get the idea that one of the parents in the book was having an affair.  The protagonist was going to discover it.

Uh-oh, I thought.  I wonder if that's appropriate for my 9-year old?  Am I going to make him worry?  I suggested that we take a break (figuring I'd read on ahead.)  My son cut his eyes at me.  "Keep reading," he said.  A few pages later, I said, "Should we talk about where I think this is going?"  "Just keep reading," he said.

Then it was out: the affair, the mistress, the upset protagonist.  I read to the end of the chapter and closed the book.  "Ok," I said, "Let's talk."

"I don't want to talk about the book," my son said, very quickly.  "I want to talk about ----"  And he named one of his close friends, whose family arrangement was atypical.

"Oh," I said.  "Well, first of all, whatever is going on with parents is totally never the kid's fault."

My son breathed an enormous sigh of relief.  "Yeah, I knew that," he said.

We proceeded to have one of our best talks ever, about families and relationships, about what we believe God tells us is right, and how people always make mistakes, and how after we've made mistakes we have to then try to make things as right as we can.  We talked about all sorts of things.  We talked for a long time.

Later I realized how silly I'd been.  In my son's small private Christian school were single parents, divorced parents, and grandparents raising children.  He had classmates with parents in jail, classmates with parents who used drugs, and classmates adopted from orphanages.  He already knew all the different kinds of mess families could be.  What he needed was to be able to talk about it.

When people ask me, as they quite often do, whether a particular book is appropriate for their child, I always say, "I don't know.  What did you think when you read it?"

"Oh," the inevitable answer comes, "I didn't read it."  Or they skimmed it looking for the bad words.

Here's a hint:  if your child is over age 10, they already know the bad words.    They already know the bad stuff.  They worry.  They don't need you to tell them that all families are man and woman, married forever, virgins until their wedding night, protestant Christians who never drink, smoke, or swear.  They need you, or someone, or a book, to tell them that they are not alone.  That they can make mistakes and still be good people.  That in the end everything can turn out all right.  They don't want us to back away from the difficult stuff.  They want the truth.  They want us, or someone, or a book, to help them deal with it.

Over ten years ago I went to the ALA convention in Atlanta.  My fourth book was just about to be published; I wasn't someone many people had heard of.  I was wandering the convention floor when I happened upon the company who'd recorded an audio book of my third novel, a story about a pioneer girl with severe asthma.  The company is a big deal; their posters and displays were all about the latest John Grisham audio book, something like that.  I went up to the two men there and said, "I'm Kim Bradley, and you recorded my book Weaver's Daughter.  Thank you."

The first man shook my hand in a sort of smug, isn't-she-a-cute-children's-author sort of way.  The second man looked startled.  "You wrote Weaver's Daughter?" he said.  "I read that book to my daughter."  He paused, then went on.  "Until we read it, I never knew she was afraid to go to sleep because she thought she'd stop breathing in the night.  She said she thought she was the only person who ever felt like that.  I never knew how scared she was."  He paused again.  "Thank you."

Banned Books Week: What It Means to Ban a Book

OK, I'm back.  Last week's comparative silence was brought to you courtesy of my finishing a draft of my current novel.  (Huzzah!)  I had a lot going on in non-writing life, and a lot going on in the revision, which was finally sailing right along, and had to do some very creative scheduling just to cope with that.  No time left for blogging.

This is Banned Books Week, in which the American Library Association urges us all to consider banned books and what they mean to our society. 

Banning books is not about liking or disliking a book.  There are plenty of books I don't and won't read, based upon my personal preferences and idiosyncratic issues.  I don't read rape books.  I strenuously avoid books in which small children die.  I didn't read Fifty Shades of Grey because ewww, and while I did read Between Shades of Grey (totally different book!) I'll only do it once because who has that much emotional stamina?  Anne Rice creeps me out; Danielle Steele is a hack; I like bodice-rippers but only if they're well-written; I think Nicholas Evans sucks.  You're free to disagree. 

Banning books is not about someone else deciding what your children can read.  It's really not.  This is where parents get all up in arms, because sometimes schools assign books parents feel are inappropriate for their children.  And sometimes, based upon the children, they are.  I've never invoked the opt-out clause for what my own children read in school, but I did one time invoke it when my daughter's third-grade teacher wanted to show the class the movie The Passion of the Christ.  (In this case, I actually did kibosh the movie for the whole class, by gently inquiring if the school had a policy about showing rated R movies.  Turns out they did.  But I was just curious.  Mostly, I wanted my daughter, who's very visually sensitive anyhow, to not watch any part of that movie.)  Nearly every school has an opt-out clause for assigned readings; teachers will assign a different book if parents ask them to.  As for books from public libraries--if you don't want your child to read something, tell them you won't let them.  Easy.

Banning books is about one person deciding what an entire community can or can not read.  When you challenge a school, library, or bookstore's right to carry or assign a book, you're saying, "I don't want to read this, and I don't want anyone else to be able to read it, either." It's censorship, straight up.  It violates our First Amendment rights to free speech and free expression. 

That's why it's a big deal.  Look, I get the part about protecting your children.  I had a four-year-old who read voraciously at fourth-grade level, and it was a struggle for several years to find her enough books to make her happy while avoiding those that were emotionally way over her head.  You are allowed at any time to forbid your child reading something.  You are not allowed to forbid mine.  Or me, for that matter.  Cheerio.