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Why Banned Books Need Honest Reviews
Writers play into the hands of pressure groups when they withhold valid criticisms of challenged books
Do writers hesitate to criticize some books for fear that they’ll appear sympathetic to pressure groups trying to ban them?
I hadn’t thought about the question until a culture war erupted in my town involving Patricia McCormick’s Sold, a young adult novel about a 13-year-old Nepali girl sold into sexual slavery in India. Our library lost thousands of dollars in state funds after it refused to move the book from the teen to adult section as demanded by Alabama officials and pressure groups like the Moms for Liberty.¹
Sold had been a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and had won honors from libraries, but it’s also second-most-often challenged book in the U.S., according to the American Library Association. And after it caused a local furor, I searched for evenhanded reviews of both its strengths and weaknesses.
I found exactly one balanced review, in a publication in neighboring Florida, which had also tried to ban it.
