Please No Book Bans in Bixby - An Open Letter

As I know you are aware, there is a public conversation going on about book banning and censorship. I am offering my thoughts as a parent of children who would be directly affected by a book currently under review by this district. First, you need to know about Ben. Ben was 4 and his older brother was 7 when I got a phone call on a Thursday morning that the virus Ben was fighting was no virus - he had leukemia and we needed to get to Saint Francis Hospital immediately so he can begin what would turn out to be years of chemotherapy. With no immune system, we had to stay at home and wear masks WAY before it became the norm. It was isolating in so many ways beyond the physical. On his first day of Pre-K Ben came home and told me all about how wonderful school was, but asked me where the other kid’s poles were. “Poles?” I asked him. “Yeah, you know their poles with bags!” He was talking about IV Chemo poles - every kid he’d been around in the previous two years had chemo poles. These experiences shaped him and his brother - altered their life. There are not many fairy tales or stories where a kid fights cancer, so when one comes along I am always ready to read it and when appropriate give it to my kids. It helps them to feel less isolated - less weird. Like maybe their traumatic experience doesn’t also have to be a lonely one. That there are people - even pretend characters - who understand what it’s like. PTSD, anxiety, and depression are common for children and families who deal with childhood cancer and a book that tells the story of that experience arms my children with the words to talk about how they felt then or are feeling now. All children deserve access to books that reflect their experiences and identities. Orphans deserve to read about an orphan who saved the wizarding world from Voldemort. Children with absent fathers deserve to read how a boy with an absent father made friends with a centaur and prevented a war of the Titans by stopping a Lightning Thief. Ben and Ethan, 6th and 10th graders at Bixby Public Schools deserve access to a book about a kid fighting cancer. Censorship removes that access and therefore steals an opportunity for healing and growth. Now, is Me & Earl and the Dying Girl appropriate for my 12-year-old? Not quite yet. That’s my call as his mother. But I am not so arrogant to think that it’s my right to make that call for every other kid in the district. In fact, that book is appropriate for my 15-year-old - illustrating that WITHIN MY ONE SINGLE FAMILY there is variance in what’s appropriate and what’s not. I trust our librarians who hold higher degrees in Information Science and Literature and have access to international media guides and expert resources to make the call on what books are age-appropriate for our libraries - based on reading levels, educational psychology, developmental psychology, and neuropsychology. And I’ll take it from there. I make the final call on what they consume. I have no right to make that call for anyone else. I wouldn’t dream of demanding that every 10th grader read The Emperor of all Maladies so they can immerse themselves in childhood cancer. Not every 10th grader can handle it and I have no way of knowing which kid would be harmed and which would benefit. The same is true when we remove a book from our library - we have no way of knowing which kids would be harmed. No one is saying that the parents don’t have the right to ban books they feel are inappropriate from their children. I’m saying they don’t have the right to ban books from MY children. They don’t have the right to ban books from ALL children. I’m worried about sexual content and how women are exploited in media, so I teach my kids to be firm in the morals and then trust they'll put the book down when they come across something I wouldn't approve of. I'm worried about indoctrination, so I teach my kids to think critically (be critical) of things they read and evaluate whether they agree with what they've read or not. I'm worried about slanted literature, so I teach my kids to research context and background information about what they're reading so they can make the call on whether to trust something as factual or not. I'm worried about making children feel guilty about the actions of their ancestors, so I teach them that the sins of their fathers are not their own, but they should always be willing to learn how to be better than their parents - that should be our goal always.I share the same worries as the parents who want to ban a book. But I have a better solution. We have even uncovered a gap with parental access to our district catalog so that we can ALL make better-informed decisions for our individual children. I support more transparency and resources for our librarians to make our district catalog more accessible to the public so I can review content as needed, and remove access to that content for Ben and Ethan (but no other child) when I feel it is appropriate.