Unpopular opinion: that banned book list my cousin gave me actually saved my summer reading

My cousin Mike, who teaches high school English, told me to grab a copy of "Maus" from his classroom stash before the school board meetings got heated. He said it was the best thing the district ever tried to pull from the shelves. I read it in two days and honestly it taught me more about history than any textbook I ever touched. Has anyone else found a banned book that actually made you think harder?

2 comments

2 Comments

sean_park821d ago

I gotta say, "taught me more about history than any textbook" is a pretty spot on way to put it. I read "Maus" myself a few years back and it's wild how those graphic panels stick with you longer than a textbook paragraph ever could. But I think people sometimes miss that what makes banned books powerful isn't just the shock value, it's that they actually make you work through hard stuff instead of just memorizing dates. My cousin who's a librarian told me the same thing about "The Hate U Give" - those books get banned because they're uncomfortable, not because they're bad. The whole idea of a banned book list being a summer reading gold mine is kind of funny but true, because the stuff they try to hide usually has the most to say.

barbara27820d ago

That bit about "Maus" is exactly what I found reading "Persepolis" a few years back. The drawings make you stop and look at the faces, the little details, in a way a textbook paragraph just doesn't. I ended up keeping it on my coffee table for months, flipping through it whenever someone came over and we'd end up talking about Iran. My own kids read "The Hate U Give" for a school project and it was the first time I saw them actually arguing about a book at dinner instead of just finishing an assignment. The banned list approach is smart, but I found that if you just leave one of those books lying around and don't say anything, people pick it up anyway.