Let's Talk Bookish; Banning Books

It's Friday and perhaps time for another Let's Talk Bookish post courtesy of Book Nook Bits and the topic for today was banning books.

Here's the further prompts for today's topic.

Do you think banning books is fair? Should students be allowed to read what they want and be able to get it from their school library? In a more broad sense, how do you feel about books that have been “banned?” Do you think that it’s a crime to ban a book, no matter what it contains, or are there cases where it’s alright?

I can't deny I'm not a fan of banning books and think that student should be able to read whatever they want, but of course within reason. One shouldn't hand out Fifty Shades of Grey to a nine year old (but I suspect that trilogy isn't in a normal school library). That said, as I've once upon a time worked as a library assistant at a combined public/school library, there was a few occasions when very young kids wanted to read the Twilight Saga and I steered them towards The Little Vampire series by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg as they were a bit more age appropriate (and appropriate for their reading level).

With my background, in addition to not having that many YA titles to choose from when I grew up as those books rarely existed, especially in Norwegian, back then, I basically "graduated" from middle grade to adult books in an instant, so I might be a bit biased due to those circumstances. That said, I'm having a bit of a common sense approach - let students read whatever they want, as long as they're mature enough for the books. Some are more mature than others, some are less.

So yeah, totally not a fan of banning books, especially as one can learn a lot from reading books and not all books are meant to be comfortable reads (spoiler alert - one can't shelter kids from everything, no matter what).

That said, some books might be tackled in a proper/suitable manner and with proper discussions both before, during, and after reading. If one is going to read extracts of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler in history class, it needs to be dealt with properly for obvious reasons.