"The New Yorker" piece talks about his going to a town in Pennsylvania where "The Buffalo Tree" had been locked away in the principal's office; he thought he'd maybe change some minds during a censorship debate but came away wondering "whether his novel was in fact appropriate" for young readers.
I'm sympathetic with that. "Stoner & Spaz" is often on a banned books list and I've talked to parents -- some reasonable, some so hysterical they expect to hear my cloven hooves on the library floor as the smell of brimstone permeates the room.
Sometimes waving a P.E.N. award around and showing them glowing reviews calms people down, but other times I do that and talk calmly about Colleen's astonishing influence on Ben and they listen and nod and say, "Okay but does she have to use the F-word so much? I hate for my kid to read that. And why do they have to have sex. They're kids!"
Then we have a conversation like this: would one F-word be okay but are eight of them too much? How about four? And, I say, their sexual encounters are for Ben more about self-esteem than lust. They say, "Okay but do you have to write about how they take off their clothes? Can't they just get it over with?"
Then, like poets everywhere, a weariness comes over me and I long to lie down by a brook and dream.
So there's a new Lane Smith picture book (pub. date 8/10) that's going to turn censors crimson! It's called IT'S A BOOK. Three characters--a mouse, a donkey (though, as you'll soon see, he goes by a different name), and a monkey. The monkey's reading a book, and the donkey keeps asking him inane questions, e.g "How do you scroll down? Do you blog with it? Can it text?" etc. Monkey repeats, no, it's a book. I'm sure many parents won't be as delighted as I am when their youngsters (inevitably) run around shouting the book's last line (spoken by the mouse): "It's a book, jackass."
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