Keeping them in books

about butts, wolves, witchcraft, and anything else they want to read about

Reading makes you strong!

One of the things I wasn’t exactly prepared for, having kids, is how much time I’d spend fetching things for them. Glasses of seltzer, plates of cookies, oranges upon oranges (for Harriet), socks that fit on the foot exactly the right way (also Harriet). And, ever since Bea learned to read on her own, books.

It’s hard to keep that girl in books. She has three full bookshelves in her room, piles of books beside her bed, and piles of books next to her beanbag chair. If she complains about having nothing to read and I say, exasperated, HOW ABOUT ONE OF THE THREE HUNDRED BOOKS IN YOUR ROOM? she’ll say, “I’ve read them all!” And she has. She’s read books now that I planned to read with her, like Bridge to Terabithia (sob!) and A Wrinkle in Time.

This means we take frequent trips to the library, many trips to our favorite local bookstores, and sometimes a trip to the basement of Nana and Grandpa’s. I don’t mind at all—sharing a love of reading with my children is a dream come true. One of my biggest parenting goals, as they get older, is to make sure that they don’t lose it. There is so much that competes with books—social media, video games, phones—much of it designed by people who not only don’t care that their products are harmful and addictive, but, in the case of Facebook (for example), hid research showing the specific harms of Instagram to teen girls, including higher rates of depression and body image problems.

Books don’t work that way. They just don’t. They may be immersive, even “addictive,” and sure, maybe Bea says she can’t hear me calling her when she’s reading (I believe this because it is true for me too), but reading has a net-positive effect on well-being. Aren’t you happier when you’re reading a good book? I know I am, and my kids are too.

I feel more secure, knowing I have a book to return to at the end of the day. Audiobooks got us through the first part of the pandemic, and they have made some of my long commutes to Raleigh actually enjoyable. Books help us understand the world around us, other people, other cultures. They build empathy.

So I’m especially grateful that Bea has other people keeping her in books too. Her librarian lets her check out multiple books at a time. Our Chatham County children’s librarians (shout-out to Kathleen and Katy!) are the absolute best for recommendations, story time, and clubs. Bea’s teacher puts together a rotating basket of books for each of the kids in the room, and they all have special reading spots (this is one of the things I miss most about teaching K-12! the adorable preferred reading spots and watching a room of kids reading!).

Lately, Bea has come home from school talking about specific stories she’s read one-on-one with her teacher. She’ll ask us if we’ve heard of “this short but complex text called ‘The Necklace.’” Or, “Have you ever read a strange story called ‘The Lottery’?” That last one was kind of a spit-take, but not a bad one. Her teacher talked with Bea about the possible interpretations of the story, and I told Bea that the story generated the most bewildered and outraged letters-to-the-editor that The New Yorker had ever received, back when it was published in 1948.

And reading out loud—what a joy. I used to read out loud to my high school students, and I read aloud to my college and grad students. I love to be read to, and was so happy that Lorrie Moore chose to read an entire story to us at UNC the other night. It was a gift to listen to her, and it’s a gift, too, to remember other writers reading their own work. I can still hear Randall Kenan’s voice in my head when I read his stories.

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Did you read this outrageous news story this week, about the elementary school assistant principal fired for reading a kid’s book to kids? He was in that “fetch a book quickly” mode, because he wasn’t expecting to read on Zoom to second graders—that was another administrator’s role, but she forgot. So Toby Price jumped in with I Need a New Butt! by Dawn McMillan. He chose it because it had been a favorite of his own kids, and because he believes that “reluctant readers need silly, fun books to hook them in.” (Especially on Zoom!) The kids loved it, and stopped him in the hallway later to praise his choice.

But Mr. Price was fired two days later, for “violating the standards of conduct section of the Mississippi Educator Code of Ethics.” The book talked about butts! And farting! (I wonder if the superintendent has ever spent time with second graders? “All second graders like reading about butts and farts,” Bea, a second grader, insists.)

The article in the New York Times noted that Mr. Price is a 20-year veteran educator with significant caregiving responsibilities for his own children, including two with severe autism. He’s fighting the termination and has a GoFundMe page set up to help with legal fees (oh, how I wish people didn’t have to get help for legal representation and healthcare through GoFundMe).

On a larger level, Mr. Price is a victim of the ongoing war on teachers. An attempt to make the jobs of teachers impossible, unsustainable, not the career choice that any reasonable person who wants some kind of stability and security would make. And any war on teachers is ultimately a war on kids.

It feels like this war is happening on all fronts. A war on books and readers and teachers who are just trying to inject some joy and levity into a Zoom screen. We’re in the midst of a war on gay kids in Florida, trans kids in Texas, and all kids who are readers and listeners and complex individuals who deserve to know that the world is also complex, multicultural, multifaceted, diverse.

Bea even sleeps with books.

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It’s happening right now as another war rages in Europe—also unbelievable, outrageous, devastating to the people of Ukraine. I knew that Russian media was state-run, highly censored, and full of disinformation and lies, but I didn’t know much of anything about what kids in Russia read or are allowed to read. So I looked it up, and found this 2016 article by Masha Gessen on children’s book publishing in Russia. Gessen writes:

You would think that publishing a book for 6-year-olds wouldn’t entail political risks, even in a country where political risks abound. You would be wrong. Most of the restrictions Russia has placed on speech in the last few years have been framed as intended to protect the innocence and purity of children. A law that went into effect in 2010 is called the law “On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development.”

These laws are so restrictive and specific that they basically ban just about all books and subjects—from Little Red Riding Hood to Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Kids under 18 are prohibited from encountering any book that shows violence, serious illness, naturalistic depictions of the body, and any “nontraditional sexual relations.” This means that some toddler books representing homes with two mommies or two daddies have to be marked “18+” in order to be published and sold in Russia.

Gessen says that of course, these laws aren’t strictly enforceable—there are still libraries containing editions of Little Red Riding Hood. And yet, she writes:

The bad news was, it would be enforced in other ways, selective and unpredictable. Impossible and implausible laws serve as signals rather than rules, especially in a society like Russia, which has been conditioned to be supremely sensitive to signals from up top.

Parents have stepped into this role of enforcers, interpreters of signals—in Russia, where parents demand books’ removal from bookstores and libraries, and where functionaries examine every title for correctness. And it’s happening here, too.

Parents in Wake County who want LGBTQ+-inclusive children’s books taken out of school libraries are interpreting signals from our most poisonous politicians. (In NC, our national embarrassment and extreme right-wing signal-obeyer Madison Cawthorn attacked Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy).

Bureaucrats are interpreting them too, to the detriment of kids: like the school superintendent telling an elementary assistant principal he’d violated a code of ethics for reading a story about butts.

You have to wonder how much those parents, bureaucrats, and politicians read, when they stopped, what replaced reading for them (Facebook, Fox News, etc). You have to feel for them. But you also have to stop them.

Let’s read to our kids today, and—sometime this week—sign up to canvass, volunteer, or give to a candidate who cares about kids and books and teachers. November will be here before we know it.

P.S. If you want to hear I Need a New Butt read aloud:

I’m guessing Mr. Price was a more engaging reader, but Bea and Harriet both loved this story. Butts!