YA Author Hopkins Banned from School Visit
By Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal,09/23/2009
Young adult author Ellen Hopkins was recently banned from speaking at Whittier Middle School in Norman, OK, following a parental complaint over one of her books, a semiautobiographical account of her daughter’s battle with a crystal meth addiction.
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YA author Ellen Hopkins was banned from speaking at a middle school. |
"I made a decision that while it was under review, it wasn’t appropriate for the author visit to continue,” Siano told the local Oklahoman. “This is not an issue of the author or quality of her work. The question is about the appropriateness of the book for this age level.”
The controversy happens to coincide with the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, which starts Saturday.
Hopkins, who wasn’t allowed to move her talk to the high school, says she’s unclear whether the complaint was about language or content, but Glass, along with Crank (S & S, 2008), offers a cautionary and honest tale about addiction.
“One of the cautions is that when you live as an addict, bad things (like rape and pregnancy) can happen to you,” Hopkins writes on her blog. “Those scenes, while feeling very real, are most definitely written with a young adult audience in mind. They are not sensationalized nor particularly graphic.”
While Hopkins says she understands parents who decide against their child reading her books, “no one person should be able to tell other people what their children can or can't read.”
Hopkins says she receives thousands of messages from readers, many of whom are in middle school, thanking 
her for turning them away from drugs and allowing them to live vicariously through her characters, so they don't have to actually take drugs.
“I've done hundreds of school visits,” Hopkins says, adding that they’re positive experiences. “I've never corrupted a student. In fact, my talks inspire them. Arm them. Inform them. On the middle school level, I am totally sure I have stopped kids from ever considering drug use.”
Whittier librarian Karin Perry, who won the author visit in a charity auction, scheduled an off-campus event at Hillsdale Baptist College in Moore, OK, on Tuesday for those who wanted to hear Hopkins speak. More than 150 teens, parents, teachers, and librarians from Norman and neighboring school districts showed up to hear the author talk about her books, which deal with real-life teen issues such as peer pressure, drugs, and sexual exploration.
"Somebody’s got to write about it,” Hopkins told the crowd. "We’ve got to look at it and figure out how to turn this stuff around.”
Hopkins recently wrote a poem called "Manifesto" for the Simon & Schuster Banned Books Week Web site, a stanza of which is below:
Torch every book.
Burn every page.
Char every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.
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| Submitted by: | Annamaria Basile 9/28/2009 8:42:07 AM PT |
| Location: | maryland |
| Occupation: | Graduate student/mom |
I think it is grandiose of parents to think they can keep their kids off of drugs (and, conversely, by banning an author visit keep them uninformed). My guess is that these kids watch PG-13 movies in spades and play violent video games. We underestimate kids' empathy at work when we keep them from real-life situations and from people who have real experience to share.
| Submitted by: | Joni Sensel (senselj@yahoo.com) 9/26/2009 1:37:40 AM PT |
| Occupation: | writer |
Rawlin, sorry, but if you think "most middle-schoolers" have not yet had
an experience of being high -- usually through alcohol but often other
substances -- you are sadly mistaken. And it's not merely Ellen's
conviction that she has influenced lives. She has plenty of letters from
readers that prove it.
| Submitted by: | Rawlin Smith 9/24/2009 3:29:49 PM PT |
| Occupation: | writer |
It's grandiose for an author to insist that her books keep kids off drugs. And addict often comes to illegal drug use gradually--often after getting a taste of the legal drugs first. (see ALCOHOL)
First you find that you like getting high, then you find ways to get higher. Most middle-schoolers don't know that yet. They've yet to be introduced to drugs and alcohol. So to use their testimonials as proof of the efficacy of Hopkins work is naive at best.
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