Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

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Memory erupts from the mind at the most casual instances. A smell of sharp detergent, a touch of soft fabric, the vision of sun on trees with a cool wind on your face, all these can bring forth the past in detail, emotions and broken dreams of long ago times. Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane is one man’s journey into his past, his childhood. The exploration of this past brings horror and joy, home and comfort that touches on the creation of a dreamer through lost time and the perception of universal truths.

We begin with a man returning home for a funeral and visiting a place where he once knew a girl who believed a small pond was an ocean. The narrator goes into his own past, telling of a suicide that lead to the meeting of the peculiar Hempstock family. While journeying with Lettie Hempstock, the youngest of the family, he brings into the world something old and other that terrorizes him. The other thing is driven from this world but not without great cost, both the Hempstocks and the boy who became a man.

The obvious reference of the tale is Gaiman’s own childhood. He says as much, using it as a way to describe his childhood through metaphors of holes in hearts looking to be filled and the dreamer searching for stories after losing part of his own. If this sounds as though I am being vague in my interpretation of the text, it is because I’m reflecting the feeling of the story. Childhood is nothing but notions and expressions of awakening, of searching without knowing what you are looking for. The otherworldly aspects of the story simply serve to remind the reader that everything when you are young is unknown, that sometimes you have to realize you will never be old enough to grasp the whole of the universe.

Various points in the story touch on writing and reading in ways I can not be sure everyone will find. Speaking from my own experience, several moments and passages cut deep, peeling away beliefs I held and a life I felt I lived. Simply giving context to that statement would expose much of my own belief in the world and my own childhood that I am not sure I want to share in a public forum, yet let’s say somethings are universal no matter if you are in the English countryside fighting monsters or in the piney woods of Mississippi trying to sleep at night. We humans are simple creatures, really, bound to our lives in quiet desperation often shouting into our own voids. Mr. Gaiman has the ability to reach across his void and remind the reader that he or she is not alone, a rare talent and gift the best storytellers possess.

"Dances and Dames"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

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Hunger Games (series) by Suzanne Collins

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Banned

2010 - New Hampshire - Challenged by a parent to the Goffstown school board who claimed it gave her 11-year-old nightmares and could numb other students to violence

What if you wanted to kill children in a systematic and fun way? Well, first you’d ravage the environment, centralize the government creating a wild utopia surrounded by disparate states who’d fund the utopia, and then set up an elaborate reality show where in children from these disparate states would battle for the death for the pride of their state. In the Hunger Games, we see this dream come to fruition and succeed and then fail through the eyes of Katniss Everdeen, the girl with the Mockingjay tattoo but really just a pin.

The story of the Hunger Games is old as time itself. Following Katniss, we see her enter into the battle royal against her will and compete for her life while finding sorta love and a sense of purpose while the world collapses around her. The first novel centers on her entrance into the games and the set up of the world, showing how the society is focused on the horrific murder of children by children for children. The second book continues with her post traumatic stress, throwing her back into the games as a way to discredit the martyr she became. The third book centers around the open rebellion and overthrow of the games and the Capitol that creates them, showing the horrors of war and the effect it has on our characters while being fairly poorly planned as a written story. Each builds on the other to a disappointing, yet final ending. Or does it? Sure, why not.

The reason these books are mentioned here are three fold: there’s a movie coming out, they are extremely popular, and they are about child murder. Children in jeopardy is a long held trope in fiction, back when Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island kid were going off to have adventures and establish themselves as kids dealing with horrific stuff. The Hunger Games series amps up the trauma for today’s youth by having violence, eugenic experiments, and a centralized government that celebrates the horror for entertainment. The twist the later books depend on, that even the good guys can become broken monsters when fighting monsters, also lend credence that humanity as a whole is broken and worthy of destruction by our own hand. Sure, one government murders children in televised games but the approaching new world order did not get there by holding hands and singing “Timber” as the previous government fell. Nobody gets out of the Hunger Games series untouched, even the guy doing it for love who gets brainwashed into becoming a violent killing machine.

The series was clearly rushed in the writing and publication. The first book is a straightforward tale, thought-out and well plotted while the second and third amble along admirably under the same “meet everybody for the first half and go into battle mode for the second half.” The psychology of the characters is interesting and developed if you read into the narrative, but on the surface comes across as boring melodrama between teens in a war setting. The third book suffers the most as the set up is supposed to be a shock to the reader yet comes across as bland and formulaic after the initial reveal wears off. By the end, there is little for our narrator and heroine to do, possibly a theme of the piece but more often than not boring. Come for the child murder but stick around because why not finish these easy to digest books.

Sources

Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging our Freedom to Read. 2014

"Dances and Dames"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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Desert Places: A Novel of Terror by Blake Crouch

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People are horrible creatures, right? To paraphrase an Internet meme, “we bomb our own, we poison our air and water, and we nailed one of our prominent god figures to a stick.” Violent and wild, the human race controls its environment rather than have our environment control us. So what happens when you take one of these creatures and pit it against its own, take a person who deals in the abstract violence of crime fiction and hand him over to a serial killer? You get Desert Places by Blake Crouch (author of Wayward and Pines, basis of the show Wayward Pines).

The novel tells the story of Andrew Thomas, prominent author, as he deals with a terrorizing figure attempting to educate him in the ways of murder. The serial killer frames him, kidnaps him, and carries out many gruesome acts of violence. Andrew struggles to deal with the situation and turn the tables on his attacker, but in the end, well, this ain’t a happy story.

The plot of the novel reads like a Saw or Hostel novelization. Take a normal guy, put him in an extreme situation filled with graphic violence, and watch him struggle against the forces against him both internal and external. Well written with dark brooding and interesting characters, Desert Places finds its place in horror and dabbles with the psychological aspects of psychopathy. It falls short in proving its point, that some people are just evil and do evil shit, but is entertaining none the less.

Banned

2004 - Mississippi - I found this book as one of, if not the first, books that were ever challenged in my library while I was a professional librarian. A little old lady picked it off the new shelf and was horrified by it, demanding we remove it from the collection. My boss read it and put it up in the fiction section where it died a slow death of non-exposure. I found it again in the book sale and picked it up for a quarter. Now, nearly a decade later, I present it to you.

"Dances and Dames"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy by R L Stine

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Ready to get terrifying nightmares and the most heart-pounding terror of horror? Too bad, we read Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy by R L Stine.

Banned

1996 - Florida - Series was challenged at Bay County elementry schools for "satanic symbolism, disturbing scenes, and dialog"

1997 - Minnesota - Challenged but retained at the Anoka-Hennepin school system

Sources

CNN - Minneapolis, MN

Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read. 2014.

"Dances and Dames"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

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Gone Girl
By Gillian Flynn

The marriage of two crazy people falling down the rabbit hole of insanity.

"Dances and Dames"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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Mick Harte Was Here by Barbara Park

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Mick Harte Was Here
By Barbara Park

A young lady talks about her dead brother and we talk about death and FUN. It's pretty dark.

Banned 

1998 - South Carolina - Challenged but retained at Liberty Middle School Library in Seneca after a grandmother complained.

2004 - North Dakota - Challenged, but retained at the Centennial Elementary School library in Fargo after parents complained to school officials that the book contains themes and language inappropriate for elementary students.

Held at Cabell County Public Library

Sources

Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging our freedom to read. 2014.

Marshall University 

Bismark Tribune

"Dances and Dames"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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Junie B Jones and The Stupid Smelly Bus by Barbara Park 10

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Some talk about bears and read the best banned book ever.

Banned

ALA Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009

1998 - New Jersey - Challenged but retained at Harmony Township school after a parent complained that the book teaches extreme negative emotions (hate) are okay and that the book never resolves the issues it raises or gives ways to handle negative emotions.

Sources

Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging our freedom to read. 2014.

"Dances and Dames"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

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Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

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It's a diary and I feel very uncomfortable talking about it because it's nonficiton... dammit just read this book.

Where did the young adult novel start? Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer? Robert Louis Stevenson with his pirates? Farther back? I have no idea, but for the modern novel written in the voice of youth, I would put my money on Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. The book has been placed on banned lists for its open discussion of the life of a Jewish family in hiding during the Holocaust, particularly newer editions that contain thoughts and descriptions of sex and the female body.

Written by a fourteen-year-old Anne Frank, the book describes her life living in an attic in Amsterdam during the Holocaust. Frank acts the part of a teenager in her prose, often spiteful and harmful in her depictions of her family and the others in the attic, yet with a keen insight and hope into the human condition that shows even in the darkest times people reach for each other. The inspiring words of this young girl, despite or even because of her death in a concentration camp after capture, ring true to even the most cynical heart.

The tale Frank tells in her own voice lays the ground work for later fiction, telling the story from Anne’s point of view. The diary begins before the family goes into hiding and follows their story well, either through editing or simple telling. The building the story to an anti-climax and sucker punch of an ending that saddens even if the reader goes into it knowing what happened. Simply put, Anne brings the reader into her world and charms the hell out of the reader, making the abrupt ending and reports of her death painful and impact all the more.

Opponents of the book range from the detractors of its veracity and parents who do not believe their children should be learning about their bodies at a young age. Over the years, several groups attempted to discredit the diary as a work of fiction despite the work being published by Otto Frank, Anne’s father and the only surviving member of those in the attic, and studies done that proved it true. A new edition of the book had items inserted that had been left out where Anne talked about her body, menstruation, and sex in general, at times almost clinical discussions by Anne of her own vagina. These new sections caused parents to ask the book be removed from school libraries and reading lists or replaced by the old copy. Hiding or erasing parts of uncomfortable truths is part of the human condition, though, something Anne new all too well.

Banned

1982 - Virginia - Challenged in Wise County after several parents complained the book contains sexually offensive passages

1983 - Alabama - Four members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee called for the book's rejection because it is "a real downer."

1998 - Texas - Removed for two months from Baker Middle School in Corpus Christi after two books called the book pornographic. Students waged a letter writing campaign and a review committee recommended the book returned.

2010 - Virginia - Challenged at the Culpeper County public schools after a parent asked her child not be required to read the book aloud. Initial reports stated a version of the book was stopped being assigned for sexual material and homosexual themes. The version, the 50th anniversary edition, would not be taught despite the school not following its own complaint policy. The Internet caught the story and it drew international attention. The book remained part of the curriculum, possibly at another grade level.

2013 - Michigan - Challenged but retained in the Northville middle schools despite anatomical descriptions in the book. Opponents to the challenge wrote that the book shown a positive light on the changing female body as Frank was hiding from Nazis.

Sources

Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read. 2014.

"Dances and Dames"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

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Two teenagers with cancer fall in love in a very structured story that hammers home the point of life.

"Dances and Dames"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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The Giver by Lois Lowry

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In a world where everything is the same, one boy gets his mind hole blown open when he meets The Giver.

Banned

1994 - California - Four parents complained violent and sexual passages were inappropriate at Bonita United School District in La Verne and San Dimas and the book was temporarily banned

1995 - Montana - Because of infanticide and euthanasia, students at Columbia Falls require parental permission

1996 - Ohio - Challenged at Lakota High School in Cincinnati

1999

Florida - Challenged but retained at Lake Butler public middle school after a parent complained of infanticide and sexual awakening discussed in the book.

Ohio - Challened at the Troy Intermediate School in Avon Lake after a patron objected to the "mature themes" of suicide, sexuality, and euthanasia

2003 - Missouri - Challenged in Blue Sprints after parents called the book "lewd" and "twisted" and "pleaded for it to be tossed out of the district." After a review by two committees and a recommended retention the controversy continued.

2006 - Kansas - Challenged but retained at the Seaman Unified School district 345 elementary school library.

2007 - California - Two parents in Mt Diablo School District in Concord complained of the descriptions of adolescent pill-popping, suicide, and lethal injections given to babies and the elderly.

Sources

Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read. 2014

The Giver Banned - Slate.com 

Banned Books Awareness

"Dances and Dames"

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

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