Should kids get to read anything they want?

A few years ago my students gave me an awesome t-shirt with a lot of books on it and the words, “I’m with the banned.” (Thanks awesome students and parents!) Which I am. I’m basically of the opinion that if someone wants to read something, they should. I think if a book has ideas or situations in it that make you uncomfortable, it’s a great time for nuanced conversations and self-reflection. Also that a person doesn’t have to finish everything they start. I also believe we don’t have the right to say what other people can or can’t read.

Of course, this philosophical/political stance quickly gets personal when it comes to parenting, and my desire to protect my child’s happiness and joy, which comes out as wanting to protect her innocence. Just this week my philosophy is being put to the test.

My eight-year-old is about a year into really reading. Last summer she joyfully read Elephant and Piggie books aloud, doing all the voices, and we worked our way through a really sweet reader from the 1970’s that her teacher sent us home with for the summer. Reading took off over the year. This summer, it’s at least a tote bag of library graphic novels a week. She’s liking the large print and fast pace of those books, and has been rejecting other books. This is fine with me, because she’s clearly enjoying and understanding what she’s reading, and her world is growing more broad from it, and that’s all the point.

Then this week she brought home a scifi book (SKYWARD: Claim the Stars by Brandon Sanderson) from a little free library and decided to read it. She’s a few pages into the prologue, and seems to have a pretty clear understanding of everything that is happening, and could summarize it coherently.

I really, really, really didn’t want to squash her love of reading and her sense of freedom in reading. I also had no idea how mature the book was, my only reference being the cover, and knowing a friend who likes to read this author sometimes. I could feel myself wrestling with different parental urges. Should I encourage her to wait? Or to read whatever she’s drawn to? Should I just stay out of it and let her have that independence?

It’s so easy to judge people who make a fuss about young people reading various books that scandalize the fussers. I see these cultural flare-ups as being deeply harmful to youth who need to see themselves reflected in books and youth who need to see outside their own experiences (and who doesn’t?), as well as being a distraction from the deeper work of education. At the same time, I don’t actually want my eight-year-old reading really graphic or disturbing things.1

So I’ve been sitting with it, and looking into the book more. I asked my friend about the book and he said that it was pretty tame, and was actually a YA book, which I hadn’t picked up on. I think if he’d had a different answer, I might have had a conversation with my daughter along the lines of, “I hear that book has some grown-up things in it that I don’t think are good for kids. What if you wait to read it until you’re older?” If she didn’t want to wait, I’m not sure what I would have done. Maybe have more conversations to put the content in context as she read it, maybe put my foot down about needing to wait. (Parenting: making it up as we go along, folks.)

As it is, I’ve decided to just stay out of it. I expect some level of the book will go over her head. I also believe that kids’ brains tend to fill in the images to a level that they’re ready for when they read a story, unlike with a video, so if something is intense, I think she’ll handle it. She’s a kid who likes scary stories, not someone who is easily disturbed. I also think it’s highly likely the book will be hard enough it bores her, and we find it hanging out with the dust bunnies deep under the bed next time we clean/excavate her room. Or maybe she’ll become a sci-fi fan, jumping in the deep end here.

I still remember a few scandalous things I read as an early teen. I think I read things before that which would have shocked me if I understood their nuance. I think both of those things are OK. If anything, books are a really gentle space to wrestle with edgy things.

Ultimately, I want to raise a kid who is grounded in a sense of joy and safety, and who approaches the world with wonder and curiosity. I want her to be able to put hard/disturbing things she encounters into a context that lets her have compassion, safety and agency rather than fear. I want her to put herself in other people’s shoes, and to also have a sense of her own opinions. So I want her to read broadly and freely and with relish, and to have whatever conversations are helpful to put what she reads in context.

I’m also very curious how you all have handled this conundrum. Hit me up in the comments!

And not to be competitive about it, but is your kid doing summer book bingo at the library? My kid is going to black that page right out.