Musings of a Future English Educator: Censorship and Children's Literature

Two weeks ago I read Sherman Alexie's one and only middle school book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I read this because I had assigned it to one of the kids I tutor. He and I both ended up loving this book. For the first week of reading, he was only supposed to finish the first fifty pages of the book. Instead though, he read the full thing. This was really exciting, especially since he is usually a very reluctant reader. I think there were many things about this book that drew both me and him into it. For one thing, the story feels very true to life. It doesn’t censor much. I did worry that this might be a problem, since I was asking a younger student to read and think about much more complex issues than he is normally exposed to. This ended up not being a problem at all though. In fact, I think it might have been one of the main reasons as to why he was able to engage with the text on a level I had not seen from him before. I feel like the main character of this story is a very relatable character for younger readers because of how he goes through some very realistic struggles throughout Alexie’s novel.  

Overall, the experience of teaching The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian really got me into thinking about the censorship of children's books. I know from the small amount of research that I did that The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has been highly contested within the school system. It does, after all, deal with heavy subjects such as racism and alcoholism. The main character of the novel, Junior, also uses a lot of profanity to express his emotions. At the same time though, I think it is important to keep in mind that children are often subjected to these things in their actual lives. Keeping a child from reading or watching something that has something that has been deemed “inappropriate” does not mean that that child has not been already exposed to that thing. Therefore, doesn’t make sense that we should encourage these kids to read books that deal with such subjects? Isn’t a good thing if they are able to find someone to relate to in the pages of a book? A character who might be going through a similar problem that they or one of their friends is having to deal with in the real world?

What do you guys think? Is censorship for children's literature a good or bad thing? I’m really curious to know how you all feel about this topic :)