Valerie Nye - True Stories of Censorship Battles in Americas Libraries

TRUE STORIES OF CENSORSHIP BATTLES IN AMERICAS LIBRARIES

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True Stories of Censorship Battles in Americas Libraries

Edited by Valerie Nye and Kathy Barco

American Library Association

Chicago 2012

Valerie Nye is the library manager at Santa Fe University of Art and Designs Fogelson Library. She previously worked as a library consultant at the New Mexico State Library, where she started researching and presenting trainings on intellectual freedom and banned books. Nye earned her MLIS from the University of WisconsinMadison. She has coauthored two guide books with Kathy Barco and one literary research guide with R. Neil Scott titled Postmarked Milledgeville: A Guide to Flannery OConnors Correspondence in Libraries and Archives. Nye is a trustee on the board of the New Mexico Library Foundation.

Kathy Barco is currently a childrens librarian with Albuquerques public library. She was youth services coordinator at the New Mexico State Library from 2001 to 2006. Barco earned her MLIS from the University of Southern Mississippi. She has contributed to Thinking Outside the Book: Essays for Innovative Librarians and wrote the foreword to Librarians as Community Partners: An Outreach Handbook. Barcos READiscover New Mexico: A Tri-Lingual Adventure in Literacy won a New Mexico Book Award. She is on the board of the New Mexico Library Foundation and received the New Mexico Library Associations Leadership Award in 2006.

2012 by the American Library Association. Any claim of copyright is subject to applicable limitations and exceptions, such as rights of fair use and library copying pursuant to Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act. No copyright is claimed for content in the public domain, such as works of the U.S. government.

ISBNs: 978-0-8389-1130-3 (paper); 978-0-8389-9362-0 (PDF); 978-0-8389-9387-3 (ePUB); 978-0-8389-9388-0 (Mobipocket); 978-0-8389-9389-7 (Kindle). For more information on digital formats, visit the ALA Store at alastore.ala.org and select eEditions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

True stories of censorship battles in Americas libraries / edited by Valerie Nye and Kathy Barco.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Libraries--Censorship--United States. 2. Intellectual freedom--United States. 3. Librarians--Professional ethics--United States. 4. Libraries--United States--Case studies. I. Nye, Valerie, 1971- II. Barco, Kathy, 1946

Z711.4.T78 2012

025.213--dc23

2011031913

Design and typesetting by Adrianna Sutton using Minion and Gotham typefaces.

CONTENTS

, by Ellen Hopkins

Lucy Bellamy

Ron Critchfield and David M. Powell

Peggy Kaney

Susan Patron

Natasha Forrester

Alisa C. Gonzalez

Angela Paul

Laurie Treat

Sherry York

Marie-Elise Wheatwind

Lis Chlebanowski

Gretchen Gould

Michelle Martinez

Matt Nojonen

Susanne Caro

Cathlene Myers Mattix

Lauren Christos

Amy Crump

Sydne Dean

Robert Farrell

Hollis Helmeci

James LaRue

Kristin Pekoll

Karin Perry

Kathryn Prestidge

Paul Hawkins

Erica MacCreaigh

Kathy Barco

Rosemary J. Kilbridge

Nadean Meyer

Cindy Simerlink

Additional material and updates available at www.librarycensorship.com

I DIDNT start my first novel, Crank, expecting publication. Writing the semiautobiographical book was, for me, catharsis. However, as I wrote about this straight-A teen with ambitious dreams, who takes a wrong turn and ends up addicted to crystal meth, I realized the story was bigger than my daughtersand mine. The story belonged to all those who have been touched by this monster drug, or any addiction, really. The book found a publisher easily, and an editor who believed in the power of the tale. Still, I never expected Crank to become the word-of-mouth sensation that it did, eventually becoming a New York Times best seller. Nor did I ever dream it would catapult me into the upper echelon of todays YA writers. Neither did I ever expect to receive e-mails like this one (reproduced here verbatim):

Dear Ellen,

First I would like to say that I am a 19-year-old girl named Kimber. I read all of your books but I really need to thank you for Crank and Glass. I read both of them when I was 17 and I thought they were wonderful.

I had lived that life, I did crystal meth when I was 13 after the suicide of my best friend. Youre book was the first book I read that had to do with drugs since I had stopped doing them when I was 16, and it was a rather odd experience to step back into that life and see how self destructive I was.

I know that I am two years late in writing this but I had just got done packing my things to go to college and I found your books. So I re-read them, and it is still an odd experience re-entering that world, but I still want to thank you. I know that sometimes life gets hard, people die, and burdens get hard to bear, but you book is a constant reminder that the things that I had experienced while I did meth, I never want to go through again.

Books like yours can save someones life, even the people who have gone through those issues. Your books have saved me from myself more times than I can think of and even though I never told you before, I felt you should know.

The thing about books that the small group of people who would prefer that no one reads your books is that books give people a chance to try on other lives. They give people a chance to know what comes with doing drugs without having to do drugs.

Thank you, for everything you have done for me and all your readers. You are appreciated.

Love,

Kimber

E-mails. Snail mail. MySpace. Facebook. Twitter. Various other social networking venues. Between them, I receive hundreds of messages every day from my readers. Some simply thank me for my books, or tell me they were never readers until they found my novels. Others credit me with inspiring their own muses (and often they ask for critique or information on how to publish). But many, many are like Kimbers. They thank me for insight into their own addictions, or the addictions of those close to them. They thank me for veering them away from the path to addiction or suicide. They thank me for letting them know theyre not alone, theyre not crazy, they are okay. They thank me for literally saving their lives.