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Biblioracle: Could trying to ban a book actually get it more readers? Perhaps we’ll find out.

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There are a number of tried and true ways to get young people reading more books.

One is to expose them to books early and often. Read out loud to them. Leave books in their bedrooms. Let them drool on the corners of the cardboard covers when they chew them.

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Whatever works.

As kids get older and can read for themselves, let them choose at least a portion — ideally a large portion — of what they read. Feel free to suggest, but try not to judge, what they spend their time reading.

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While this is happening, it’s best to model good reading habits. Show how you can choose reading over television or scrolling on a phone. Talk frankly about the pleasures and benefits that reading brings you. Read widely yourself.

Once you’ve done all of this, here’s one more thing you can try: ban young people from reading certain books.

No, I am not actually for banning books. I find the people trying to prevent the circulation of stories and ideas they find objectionable to be absurd and un-American, but it is my fervent hope that the people trying to keep young people away from certain books will, in fact, drive them toward those books.

The attempts at censoring seem to be reaching ridiculous new heights.

Consider the state of Virginia, where a state delegate has sued under a state obscenity law to have “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe — a graphic memoir about Kobabe’s coming to terms with a nonbinary identity — declared obscene, and therefore illegal to make the books available to non-adults. This would involve not just excluding them from places like school libraries, but also barring their sale at bookstores.

"Gender Queer" by Maia Kobabe (Oni Press, 2019) is a recent title getting the attention of censors, in good company with James Joyce's "Ulysses" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man."

If I’m correct, the Virginia action looks like a classic example of the Streisand effect, where the attempt to censor something only draws significantly more attention to it. (The Streisand effect is named after an incident where Barbra Streisand’s attempt to get a picture of her house removed from a project tracking coastal erosion in California led to millions more people seeking out the picture.

Add the Streisand effect to the eternal teenage attraction to anything that adults have deemed taboo, and I hope the publisher of “Gender Queer” has lots of additional copies at the presses.

It’s important to recognize that these actions are not popular uprisings driven by mass sentiment. They are radical actions pushed by legislators flexing their power. Similar attempts at removing access to books in Texas were found to be the work of a single Republican legislator, not from parental complaints.

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Writing at Slate on what’s happening in Virginia, Dan Kois notes that the challenge under the statute could actually work by changing the obscenity standard from one that applies to a whole work, to one that applies to any individual part of the work.

Changing the standard on obscenity would take us back 90 years, when James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was deemed not obscene because the standard should be the “overall effect of a book” on an adult, rather than being judged on its most salacious parts.

These people need to be fought in the courts, but we can also do our part in supporting the books and authors that are being challenged by making sure young people have access to books that span the full range of human expression.

I’m hopeful these attempts at censorship will backfire, but it will require collective vigilance to ensure that outcome.

Tell the teenager in your life all about the books someone doesn’t want them to read.

John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”

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Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read

1. “The Devil’s Tickets: A Night of Bridge, a Fatal Hand, and a New American Age” by Gary M. Pomerantz

2. “Grant and Twain: The Story of an American Friendship” by Mark Perry

3. “The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town” by Brian Alexander

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4. “Queen of Our Times: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II” by Robert Hardman

5. “The Guncle” by Steven Rowley

— Beth G., Chicago

I see a strong pull toward history that tells an interesting, but not necessarily well-known story. For me, that means David Hill’s “The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America’s Forgotten Capital of Vice.” Seriously, you won’t believe the stuff that happened in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and not all that long ago.

1. “The Queen of the Tearling” by Erika Johansen

2. “Crosstalk” by Connie Willis

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3. “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America” by Ryan Busse

4. “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara

5. “The Descendants” by Kaui Hart Hemmings

— Emily F., Chicago

I feel like Emily may enjoy a novel that puts plenty of challenges in front of the protagonist, but which also ultimately provides some measure of uplift, “Writers & Lovers” by Lily King.

1. “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles

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2. “The Four Winds” by Kristin Hannah

3. “Leave the World Behind” by Rumaan Alam

4. “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” by Maria Semple

5. “Normal People” by Sally Rooney

— Maria T., Chicago

How about an odd, fun and ultimately emotional resonant book? “The Family Fang” by Kevin Wilson.

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Get a reading from the Biblioracle

Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.


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