Banned
“We were looking at the list of the books that they banned and we were scrolling through it and it was so long,” Scott said. “We had read, like, most of those books. We’re like, ‘I love that book and I love that book too.’ And they were all on the list, and we had no idea that the list was even made for the longest time.” – Ella Scott, one of the founders of the Vandegrift High School Banned Book Club
Yep, I am still on that “banned”wagon. You know the one that is hauling around a bunch of liberals, librarians, dare I say educated and empathetic “concerned citizens”? I seriously do not understand what is going on, am I just old? Don’t answer that. Maybe I am just old enough to see what we were warned out in history class, you know, the repeating of itself. Burning books, banning books, basically determining what someone else gets to experience or believe. Do we really want to go back to the time when the church and the wealthy were the only ones allowed access to knowledge?
“If students want to read these books, they should be allowed to read these books, and if they don’t, they don’t have to read them,” Hoy said (cofounder of the VHS BBC, Alyssa Hoy). “They should just be available to them, to someone if they want them. And I think with the, you know, restriction of some of these books … I feel like student perspective isn’t really being asked when they make these decisions. I feel like it isn’t happening with students in the conversation.”
Roy and Scott, sophomores at Vandergrift formed the club after seeing the book censorship happening in their own classroom and wanting to know more about the process and getting students involved. Good job, kiddos! Through this club, Scott and Hoy want students to have a greater voice in what books are reviewed and deemed appropriate for high school students. “No one’s book taste is quite the same, so I think that having a wide variety of all these different books is really important,” Hoy said. “Sometimes reading a book and finding themselves within the pages of that book is really important.”
Oh, Alyssa, you are a rock star!!
Not every book will be the reader’s cup of tea, thank goodness! I was raised by readers, thank you, mom and dad, grandma, etc. Do we pass books around in our family? Nope. I can name 2 books that my mom and I both read in the last few years, and isn’t that lovely? These people raised me, we love each other and we are still cool with the fact that we all have different reading taste.
This is why I love our book club so much, we get together and read the same book, but all have different reactions to it. It is just the most amazing thing, as a human that has been on this earth for over half a century, to still be learning more about the other humans sharing this rock with me.
Our book club meets at 6:30pm on the first Tuesday of every month. We have also been running continuous reading challenges, the next being the Little House series (guess what, people have gotten upset at those books too).
I am not a fan of burning books or banning them, well maybe the banning is okay it just gives me more books to add to my reading list! >:)
Upcoming Events: 2/23 Story Time at 10am. The Young Adult Reading Challenge (Adults can participate), ends on 2/28. On March 1st we will be starting our next challenge, Reading the Little House Series stop by the library for the 1st book, we will read all 9 over the next 3 months.