The Plaid Pladd

I thought I’d kick off my Banned Books Week posts with the only title on the 2011 list I hadn’t already read!

Yeah, I can already tell this is going to be downright salacious

Title: My Mom’s Having a Baby
Author: Dori Hillestad Butler
Illustrator: Carol Thompson
Challenged In: Carrollton, Texas and Hillsborough County, Florida
For: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

I feel like one of the most important points of this case which the author attempted to bring up when she was dramatically confronted on Fox and Friends is that this book is shelved in the children’s non-fiction section, J618.2. Even though it looks like a picture book, it’s not stuck in with Good Night Moon and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. It’s with the explanatory books about childbirth, diseases, how blood works, and World War II. And if you let your kid wander around on their own in the non-fiction section, cool, but it’s not like the library makes a secret of what that section is for. Non-fiction books are meant to explain the world in ways a child can understand, and that’s what this book does. Here’s a sample page:

This fetus is clearly rocking out to some music inappropriate for his age group

It goes through month by month of the pregnancy, explaining prenatal development and what an ultrasound is, eventually culminating in birth (with all the blood and grossness tactfully edited out). The only difference between this and the countless other books designed to help parents explain what’s happening to mom is that it goes into more detail about how the baby got in there. Which, come on, they are totally going to want to know:

Oh sorry, I should have warned you I was going to post some cartoon anatomical drawings. Avert your eyes, Hillsborough

I feel like reading this book would have prevented my childhood fear of pregnancy. It kicks off the discussion of sperm and eggs with:

Mom says it takes two people to make a baby. A man and a woman. Children can’t make babies

I was four when my mom was pregnant with my brother, and I don’t know what book they read me, but it must have been more detailed than some because I definitely knew the word “uterus” and would disdainfully correct women at the grocery store when they started talking about “the baby in mommy’s tummy”. But somehow the above piece of information did not really register and I spent the next ten years terrified of immaculate conception. Because pregnancy looked like the worst thing ever. Where were you when I was four, Dori Hillestad Butler? Why couldn’t you have explained to me that–barring divine intervention–my fears were impossible? This personal experience is one of the reasons I firmly believe that if someone is old enough to ask a question, they’re old enough to receive an answer.

I legit can’t tell if the above page is the one everyone was freaking out about, or if it’s the next one, so I’ll post them both and you can decide:

Bow-chicka-wow-wow!

Sorry if you were expecting the promised “sexually explicit” content. Like I’ve said before, challenged book lists are actually TERRIBLE sources if you’re looking for porn/erotica despite their claims. Here’s the most sexually explicit part I could find:

The man puts his penis between the woman’s legs and inside her vagina. After a while, a white liquid shoots out of the man’s penis and into the woman’s vagina.

My guess is that’s probably the most objectionable part to most people (though not to me; see the end), the part that is going to convince all our children to go out and have sex right now. I mean, how could they not? The book makes it sound so awesome, right?

Anyway, I can see why this book might not be the one some parents would choose to read to their kid about childbirth. Luckily, the library has plenty of other options with less information! They try to have something for everyone, be you interested in accuracy or euphemism. I can also see how this book might not be the one you want your kid to read having just “picked it up off the shelf”, which is why it’s super important to be involved in your child’s reading choices!

Also, rock on Dori Hillestad Butler:

To those people I want to say this: I appreciate your attempt to support me, but it’s not “the librarian’s fault,” either. Librarians have a responsibility to serve ALL members of the community. That doesn’t mean everything in a library (or even in the children’s section of a library) is right for everyone.

A library is not a day care center. It’s not the librarian’s responsibility to supervise the children who come in. It’s not the librarian’s responsibility make sure every child only picks up books that are “appropriate” for them. How could it be? What’s appropriate for one child is not appropriate for another child.

I really admire the grace with which she met this situation. The above article and this more recent one both talk about all the hate mail she’s received from people who saw the short segments on the challenge on Fox and Friends and other local news sources, both of which tried to paint the issue as way more dramatic and shocking than it actually is. “Is there anyone that actually READS these things before they put them in the li-bary?” I think the sound I just heard from my closet was my master’s degree crumpling itself into a little ball (yeah, it’s still in the closet, frames are expensive, you guys).

Finally, here are some things I didn’t like about this book:
1. It uses the word “baby” throughout, even during the first month when it is clearly just a fetal blob.
2. One picture shows food traveling through the umbilical cord into the baby, including a sunny-side up egg, which is clearly on the Do Not Eat list of foods for pregnant women.
3. Nowhere is there a picture of the mom continually vomiting.
4. The birth pictures are way less scary than an actual birth.

Obviously this book paints an inaccurate picture of pregnancy!! Will it convince our children that it’s no big deal and they should go ahead and try it, all while eating under-cooked eggs??? Should I try to get this book removed from the library because of these things I don’t like, thus saving the rest of my community from having to deal with these blatant falsehoods??

No. Stop being silly.

Next: The Notebook Girls
Previously: Banned Books Week Intro