Pardon us if we muddle our history a bit (we’ve barely made a dent in our coffee), but one of the hallmarks of the Dark Ages was that a small elite determined what information should be possessed by the masses and then dispersed said information with no regard to human ability to think and analyze.
While we’ve come a long way, there continue to be pockets of people who feel their knowledge should be the only knowledge, and they are trying to push this agenda — yes, agenda — through increasing challenges to libraries. Just as we believe parents should monitor television programming, films, music, and games (oh, especially games), we believe parents should monitor reading material*. This is called parenting.
Parents should not impose their views on others. Fiction often provides a safe outlet for exploring troubling issues. What is appropriate for your child may not be appropriate for another’s child. And we would suggest that it is in the best interest of children to be exposed to a wide variety of viewpoints. Pretending to live in a bubble (and this happens across the social spectrum, never fear) doesn’t help prepare youth for the real world. And eventually, one must venture into reality, if only for a little while.
* – Though as a former child reader, we know that stubborn readers will find any and all printed words. That is the nature of the hungry mind.
