> To those who seek to stop young people from reading The Handmaid’s Tale: Good luck with that. It’ll only make them want to read it more.
This is a double edged sword... On one hand, yes, kids will be more interested into why it's banned, and at first might be more interested to read it.
On the other hand... kids might expect too much ("if it was banned, it must be real 'bad'"), and then be disappointed with the lack of stuff they expected.
...but this might be just a cultural thing, since here in europe, in the balkans, boobs and asses are visible in public adspaces, while US had the 'nipplegate', and we didn't have any real censorship since the fall of yugoslavia and communism.. (...well, until the EU started banning russian media... which again, made more people distrust eu and watch the russian media with soe workarounds). If a book got banned here, I'd expect at least a lot of graphic (as much as text in a book allows) sex, drugs and other illegal stuff when I was a kid. If I then got eg. Catcher in the rye, I'd be disapointed.
I read Breakfast of Champions, around age 14, only because I saw that it was not kept with the general library collection, and was told that children needed permission to read it. My mom was reluctant but agreed, and that was my introduction to Vonnegut. I liked it. That underlined an interest in things singled out like that. For instance I read the cancelled stories on HN first, and while the signal-to-noise ratio is low I've found an unusual number of pearls in that pile too. If you want me to read something forbidding it is a great sales pitch.
It's a shame that I've already read Margaret Atwood's oeuvre since now I can't read her with that extra spice.
That was my experience with Lady Chatterley's Lover, and with Sexus. These books were not in my school's library, but copies circulated. It was easy to find the "dirty" bits, because the books fell open at those pages.
I found both books pretty disappointing.
I'm strongly against attempts to control young people's minds. If kids want to read a book, that's a good thing. If it's a book written for adults, that speaks to the kids' reading age and maturity; just because someone is at highschool doesn't mean they're childish. And if they are childish, then they'll likely close the book soon after opening it.
US democracy is weird. Elections for sherriffs, judges and school-library censors seems bizarre to me.
This is a double edged sword... On one hand, yes, kids will be more interested into why it's banned, and at first might be more interested to read it.
On the other hand... kids might expect too much ("if it was banned, it must be real 'bad'"), and then be disappointed with the lack of stuff they expected.
...but this might be just a cultural thing, since here in europe, in the balkans, boobs and asses are visible in public adspaces, while US had the 'nipplegate', and we didn't have any real censorship since the fall of yugoslavia and communism.. (...well, until the EU started banning russian media... which again, made more people distrust eu and watch the russian media with soe workarounds). If a book got banned here, I'd expect at least a lot of graphic (as much as text in a book allows) sex, drugs and other illegal stuff when I was a kid. If I then got eg. Catcher in the rye, I'd be disapointed.