The Plaid Pladd

Title: The Bermudez Triangle
Author: Maureen Johnson
Challenged in: Leesburg, Fl Public Library
For: “sexual innuendo, drug references, and other adult topics”

So I definitely read this book a little more than a year ago because I like other things Maureen Johnson has written. I was going to just write a blog post on it without rereading it, since I was 99% sure I knew exactly why it was being banned. Then I read the brief description on the challenged book list, got really confused by the “drug references”, and decided to bite the bullet and read it again, scouring it for the part that had escaped my memory where the three main characters (or anyone) does meth or at least talks about getting high. The good news is, my memory is actually pretty good; the only “drug reference” I could find in The Bermudez Triangle is that one of the main character’s smokes, although her friends are always trying to get her to stop. The idea that some impressionable teen girl would start smoking because of this book is pretty hilarious. The main characters also attend two parties with alcohol, although no one seems to really get drunk.

Here’s the scoop:
Nina, Avery, and Mel have been BFF forever, nicknamed The Bermudez Triangle (Bermudez is Nina’s last name) by some jealous girl that wanted into their private clique. Nina is the smart, organized, perfectionist one. Avery is the free-spirit, tough girl musician. Mel is the shy, girly one. Then Nina goes to some kind of Smart Kid Camp over the summer and falls in love with Jeremy Caves and Mel figures out that she’s gay, accidentally kisses Avery, and they start secretly dating. Natch this makes things totally awk when Nina comes back, especially after Avery decides she’s not actually gay and breaks up with Mel, Jeremy Caves cheats on Nina, and Mel’s mom finds out she’s gay and stops speaking to her. Luckily, through the power of friendship and with the help of a cute, funny guy named Parker who sadly–and kind of unfairly–never manages to get any girl, they pull through and Triangle Power lives again.

So, yeah, this book was fairly typical Three Best Friends Whose Friendship is Tested By Dating/Boys/The World, except for the whole lesbian thing, which was handled pretty tastefully. Avery and Mel kiss sometimes, and there are oblique references to “…. things.” but that’s about it. So, yes, the sexual content is about as in-your-face as drug references that are actually smoking. Seriously, Leesburg, I can totally hook you up with some YA Lit that ACTUALLY CONTAINS the things you are complaining about if you want to challenge something for real real next year. You know this and Only In Your Dreams is not the best you can do. Step it up.

Title: How to Get Suspended and Influence People
Author: Adam Selzer
Challenged in: Nampa, Idaho Public Library
For: having an abstract drawing of a nude woman on the front cover, having profanity on the back cover

I have been following an unconscious pattern while reading these banned and challenged books. For the most part, I’ve completely forgotten their entires on the 2009-2010 Challenged Books List by the time my library requests come in, so I spend a short amount of time at the beginning of the book trying to guess what it was challenged for. Usually, this is extremely easy. Not so with How to Get Suspended and Influence People. At various points in the book I vaguely hypothesized that the challenge might be about 1) satanism, 2) insubordination to authority figures¹, 3) making fun of religion, or 4) discussion of masturbation. Until about three-fourths of the way through, all of these ideas seemed so vague and unfounded² that I had to stop myself from going to look up the Offensive Immoral Thing I Should Be Looking for. Then, after finishing the book, I was pretty convinced it was the masturbation issue, especially since the act of talking about it was also challenged within the story itself. Turns out, all of these were wrong!

An appalled parent complained about this book for the “nude woman” on the cover. Here is the cover (avert thy eyes, abstract minors!):

She's in the upper right, if you're confused

So shocking right now! The parent also complained about profanity on the back cover, which I will reproduce below in its entirety:

You don’t have to be smart to be a smart-ass. But it helps.

That’s it. I’m fairly certain Appalled Parent picked this up off the shelves and never read it, because there are definitely better things to be offended by within (including better profanity).

This is a fairly light story about the beginning of eighth grade for Gifted student Leon Noside Harris. Peopled with a lightly eccentric supporting cast³, Leon spends most of his time listening to heavy metal music, making snarky and vaguely elitist remarks, and trying to drive his teacher’s a little bit crazy. So like every middle schooler. Then as a project each student in one of his gifted classes has to make an informational video to be shown to the sixth and seventh graders, and he picks sex ed. Randomly deciding to make it “avant-garde” and artistic, most of the film is famous nude paintings from Days of Yore narrated with a poem about how the feelings that puberty brings are Normal. Then one of his teacher’s freaks out that it’s inappropriate, and there’s debate both ways without getting too unrealistic or out-of-control. I actually think this might be an interesting book to read with eighth graders to talk about censorship, and who gets to decide what is and is not appropriate in schools.

But, yeah, the cover: totally raunchy.

¹I’ve actually heard of the Harry Potter series being challenged for this reason!

²Not that bans or challenges need be particularly founded. I refer you to the dictionary incident.

³His father middle-named him “Noside” because it’s “Edison” spelled backwards; he hates Thomas Edison for being a jerk, under this naming convention my kid’s middle name will be Loohcs Darg

Title: Deal with It! A whole new approach to your body, brain, and life as a gURL
Author: Esther Drill, Heather McDonald, Rebecca Odes, gURL.com
Challenged in: good old West Bend, Wisconsin Community Memorial Library
For: “being pornographic and worse than an R-rated movie”
Along with: Baby Be-Bop, Geography Club, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

So I know you’re bummed, but this is the last book on this year’s list that was challenged in West Bend. We’ve all grown really attached to the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries and their endearing little quirks, like their terrible webdesign skills and their desire to burn books about gay people. Ah, memories.

Incidentally, their awesome GoogleSites site appears just above my blog in a search for their own name, and is maybe one of the best websites I’ve seen since geocities died. Anything with that ratio of capitalized to uncapitalized words has got to be 100% legit. They also link pretty extensively to an organization called PABBIS or Parents Against Bad Books In Schools, which at least owns their own domain, but is not much better on the Only Knows the html For Bolding and Font Colors front. I love how they use the phrase “bad books” in a totally unironic way in their organization name. They try to provide an operational definition of “bad”, saying “Bad is not for us to determine. Bad is what you determine is bad. Bad is what you think is bad for your child. What each parent considers bad varies and depends on their unique situation, family and values. The main purpose of this webpage is to identify some books that might be considered bad and why someone might consider them bad. Another purpose of this webpage is to provide information related to bad books in schools.”

Adorable. In much the same way that Twilight is adorable. So deluded it is almost cute. Almost. Except for that whole trying to burn books about gay people thing or encouraging abusive relationships¹. You know, little details.

Anyway, all of this is really tangential to what I actually wanted to talk about today, Deal with It! A whole new approach to your body, brain, and life as a gURL. Once again, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries is really bad at reviewing books for content and style. Anyone who picks up this book on their recommendation, expecting pornography or an R-rated movie will be sadly disappointed. This book is basically exactly like the many books on puberty/sex/relationships/health written for teen girls, except much more detailed. Most of these sorts of books don’t also contain sections on managing your money, coping with mood swings, or changing relationships to parents and siblings, for instance, along with all the usual bad skin, buying bras, dealing with periods, practicing safe sex aspects. Naturally anyone who takes issue with the fact that some teens will have sex will freak out about this book, because it covers a different sexual acts, usually not in any great detail, but to familiarize the teen with what they are. It struck me not so much as a step-by-step guide (at least in this section), but more as a “Here are some things that exist so you don’t have to feel stupid when people mention them”. To this end, it also includes some of the more pervasive slang terms for sex acts/body parts, although these will probably begin to date it over time.

And, yes, there are diagrams and some cartoon drawings of naked women, but it would be really hard to write a book about Your Changing Body without that. They clearly have not read my personal favorite book on this topic, Body Drama: Real Girls, Real Bodies, Real Issues, Real Answers by Nancy Amanda Redd, which features an entire page of pictures of different breasts. For a demographic that spends a great deal of time worrying about if they’re “normal”, I think it’s important to show them that “normal” is a much wider, more diverse concept than they probably think. This is one of the issues I tend to be annoyingly vocal about, so I will quiet down for now.

¹But am I trying to ban Twilight? No, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, I’m not. I’m educating my imaginary daughters about how to avoid abusive boyfriends and how to get help, and then letting them Twihard as much as they want, as long as they don’t get Edward’s face tattooed on their face or something.