Synthesis Page November 8th

Arguement Essay by Maeve Woollen

     After reading multiple arguments to answer the question, "Should dark young adult fiction be banned?", the answer i've found is challenged books should be decided by the students and teachers. The books should only be banned if the students can't come up with a good enough reason for the book to be kept in the class library. This would only apply to 7-12th graders. This gives little power ti the parents, while most power to the teens and teacher. But why trust them? Why put so much trust on their teacher to decide what you child can or cannot read. This a difficult question i intend to add on to.
    In a classroom, its nice to know you have a variety of books to choose from at any moment. But knowing your not allowed to read a book about a certain topic may make you want to know more. You don't want to be deprived about this subject. In Mary Elizabeth William's "Has young adult fiction become too dark?" Williams agrees information is important. "Darkness isn't the enemy. But ignorance always is." In this simple quote, Williams explains how parents shouldn't fear the darkness of a book, but embrace it for their child. They shouldn't be running from the darkness, yet see what it has to offer. Parents seem to be too quick to ban or challenge a book without seeing what it can give the teen. Some parents believe their child will go crazy with this information, but as Sherman Alexie puts it in his article "Why the Best Kids Books are written in blood", "I wrote my YA novel as a way of speaking to my younger, irredeemable self." Alexie believes these kids need dark YA as a way to get past issues they face while not feeling so alone, yet parents don't seem to see it that way.
    But why should Parents have no say in this? As i was saying in the paragraph above, parents refuse to give the books a chance and see how they will be able to help their teens. Teachers seem to spend more time with the teens and work with them on things about their readings, such as essays or book book reports. They seem to be more interested in what the students are getting out of the book than whats in the book. While I'm not saying Teachers and smarter than parents or teachers are more important than parents, I think teachers would have a deeper look into what the students are reading. For instance, while parents would only read the quote from Jackie Morse Kessler's "Rage", "She had sliced her arms into ribbons, but the badness remained, staining her insides like cancer. She gouged her belly until it was a mess of meat and blood, but she still couldn't breath." and write off the book as being to dark for their teen, teachers would look further and investigate why the author might have put this into the book and what she wanted to readers (the students) to get out of it.
   In conclusion, I believe teachers and students should be given most power in the discussion of banning books. They would look further in the ideas of the book and author and meaning. Parents ban books too easily without discussing it too often and teens need a chance to speak up. If it was a city council meeting, no one would listen to a thirteen year old student. They need some power over what they choose to read.