"For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." -- John F. Kennedy

Like I’ve stated before, book banning is wrong. I adore books and reading is one of my favorite things to do. It upsets me when I hear about different communities or different countries banning books. I think that every book deserves to be read, even though I may not agree with every ideal or point of view, I do think that it still deserves to be read.

The one thing I really hate hearing about dealing with book banning? When schools ban books, it really makes me upset. My school didn’t actually take any action in actually trying to ban a book, but there were certain books that we weren’t allowed to read because my school didn’t agree with its message or the language in the book or something else that is just stupid. My one teacher in particular, Mrs. Jones, made it her mission to have us read banned books… granted, a few of them I didn’t really care for, but I admire her for having us read the books in the first place.

One of the books that we read that was previously banned is “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. It was banned in Ireland in 1932 because of its ‘alleged’ references of sexual promiscuity. I’m not entirely sure if it is still banned there today, but that is just one of the reasons why most schools won’t read this book and why this book is banned. Mrs. Jones had her own little Banned Books Week of sorts where we would each pick a book and read as much as we could in one week. She didn’t have all of the banned books obviously, but she had the more popular ones like, “Farenheit 451”, all of the books in the “Harry Potter” series, “Candide”, and “The Da Vinci Code”. She had the same views I do about banning books. She understood where people were coming from (sometimes) when they wanted to ban a book, but she also thought that banning the book itself was just such an insane idea because all books deserve to be read.

The one thing both her and I never understood, is why schools would even want to ban a book, especially high schools. If they’re really preparing us for the ‘real world’ and if they treat us like adults, then we should be able to read the books that ‘adults in the real world’ read.

I haven’t talked to her recently, but I’m sure she was just as upset as I was when I learned that they re-edited Mark Twain’s classic, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. Now, while I don’t particularly like anything by Mark Twain, I do believe that it was just wrong of them to re-edit that novel. There is an article about it in my required reading list over there on the side of this blog, but in case you don’t feel like reading it, what happened is in the newest version of Huck Finn, the ‘n’ word is replaced with the word ‘slave’. Now, this may be seen as good by some people because the ‘n’ word is very offensive, but it’s necessary to the book’s message. Mark Twain himself didn’t use that word but the reason he used it in the novel to show that the word is offensive and shouldn’t be used under any circumstances. He wanted to show that the people who were known as ‘slaves’ or called the ‘n’ word, were just people, just like everyone else and they shouldn’t be treated differently, which is the entire point of that novel.

Hearing that news just aggravated me because I had to read it in school and while I didn’t really like the book, I still appreciated its message. My best friend is black and I couldn’t even imagine calling her a slave or the ‘n’ word. It’s mainly because of how my parents raised me, but I think reading Huck Finn really etched in my brain that using that word is not right and should never be used under any circumstances. I think that when schools ban that book, they’re doing the community a disservice and they’re stunting the intellectual growth of the children of the community.