From: Megan Schliesman <Schliesman>
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 13:52:36 -0500

Last summer my adult book club read Marjane Satrapi's memoir
"Persepolis," volume 1 (published by Viking), a book that we at the CCBC recommended in CCBC Choices 2004 for high school age. One of my friends told me that her then-year-old son, a voracious and very experienced reader, had started to read it. I remember feeling concerned when she told me, because of the intensity of some of the content. She does not censor what her children read, but she had cautioned him that some of the scenes within it were very intense and told him he might find it disturbing. She expected that he wouldn't finish it, but he did, and he liked it. When she asked him how he felt about some of the difficult parts of the book when scary things were happening, he said, "I just skipped over them."

So while Persepolis pushed my own comfort zone too far when I thought of it being read by a ten-year-old (even a very smart and well-read one who I knew had a supportive environment in which to talk about his experiences or concerns), I was once again reminded of young readers' ability to mediate their experience with literature so that they only take in what they can handle. This was a very conscious self?nsoring on his part, different than setting the book aside altogether, as he still wanted to experience the narrative, but on his own terms.

Former CCBC Inellectual Freedom Information Services Coordinator Carin Bringelson recently wrote about intellectual freedom for the Canadian journal School Libraries in Canada. In it she wrote, "In thinking about these concrete concerns of language, sexuality, and violence, I am reminded that there is a line. There is a line that we each get to draw. A line that marks the difference between what we think is acceptable, and what we don't. As adults, we get to draw that line for ourselves: 'No, I don't want to read S&M erotica.' 'Yes, I do.' As parents and guardians, we have the power to draw such lines for our
[own] children. I would even argue that it is our responsibility to help our young people decide for themselves what is comfortable for them to read and what is not*to help them determine where they draw the line. " I couldn't agree more, and it seems to me that it is in having access to a wide range of materials that we give our children and teens exposure to materials that will help them learn to make these decisions for themselves. (You can read Carin's full article and the rest of the issue at

http://www.schoollibraries.ca/articles/154.aspx )


Megan



Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, UW-Madison 600 N. Park St., Room 4290 Madison, WI 53706

ph: 608&2?03 fax: 608&2I33 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Thu 23 Jun 2005 01:52:36 PM CDT