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International Women’s Week: Gigi Amateau interviews biblical scholar & author Dr. Kristin Swenson on women in the Bible

Mar 05, 2013 3 Comments ~ Written by Guest Blogger
International Women’s Week: Gigi Amateau interviews biblical scholar & author Dr. Kristin Swenson on women in the Bible

I enjoy reading the Bible for prayer and reflection, and often turn to its texts for reference and for inspiration when I’m working on a new manuscript or revising a work in progress. Two copies of Kristin Swenson’s BIBLE BABEL are shelved within easy reach – one in my office, the other in our family library – because her book is a friendly, insightful companion for deeper study. Who better than Dr. Swenson, then, to explore the roles and portrayals of women in the Bible? – Gigi

Gigi Amateau: Kristin, you wrote BIBLE BABEL in such a conversational, engaging style! In it, you suggest that the Bible endures because it invites readers to bring their own family histories, faith traditions, and cultural experiences to the texts. So, the Bible itself doesn’t change but people are always changing?

Kristin Swenson: Thank you, Gigi, for inviting me to chat like this! It’s impossible to exhaust possibilities for talking about — and with — the Bible. Certainly part of that is because the qualities that inform our interpretations — what we know and think and believe — are dynamic. Plus, the Bible is constantly in conversation with our culture not only on political issues (for which people use the Bible to argue both sides!) but also in creative endeavors — art, music, literature…

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Posted in books, community, culture, feminism, grown-up books, guest post, International Women's Week, literature, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Banned Books Month Guest Post from Cheryl Rainfield: On Healing Through Books

Sep 28, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post from Cheryl Rainfield: On Healing Through Books

I write the books I needed as a teen and couldn’t find. People call my books edgy, and I guess they are, but for me and for many teens out there, they are just part of normal life. Bad things happen to people—and I think we’re a lot better off if we can talk about them, and find out that we’re not alone. Books are a great way to do that.

I’m an incest and ritual abuse survivor (my parents were part of intergenerational cults). I have some effects from the abuse and torture, including PTSD, body image issues, and depression, and I used self-harm to cope. I’m also queer and feminist. So I have a lot that I want to talk about! I try to take only a fragment or two at a time from what I went through in ritual abuse, and focus on those in each book. I want to make sure readers can hear me, not turn away from the pain or the trauma. So I make sure to write my novels as entertaining reads, full of suspense and tension. But I’m also trying to reach people, to let them know they’re not alone, that it gets better—and to help others understand what it can be like.

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Posted in banned books, books, community, culture, guest post, lgbtq, literature, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , ,

Banned Books Month Guest Post from MK Reed: Talk About It

Sep 26, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post from MK Reed: Talk About It

Dear Teens of Today,

I was asked to write about censorship, and since I came of age in the extremely liberal 90′s in which we discussed the President’s boners etc, as part of current events, I didn’t really think that I had much to say to my teen self about censorship.

Through high school, censorship basically seemed like a thing that happened in dystopian futures like 1984 or FAHRENHEIT 451 or BRAVE NEW WORLD. But then I went to college, and the whole world apparently went crazy, and unusual things started happening, like parents whose kids started getting really excited about 700 page books about wizards started getting upset that their kids were reading 700 pages books about anything not Jesus. While this was happening, the new President encouraged students to believe getting a C was good enough for an average kid to get into Yale & become president, ignoring the part where his dad was super rich and also already both a Vice President & President. Then his regime mandated that sex ed classes should just be about how you should never have sex, ever; which is technically the opposite of education as you learn no facts. It’s been a weird, dumb decade like that, with numerous sins of omission from the top down.

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Posted in banned books, books, community, culture, graphic novels, guest post, literature, pop culture, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , , ,

Banned Books Month Guest Post from Laura Ellen: On Censorship in My Back Yard

Sep 20, 2012 1 Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post from Laura Ellen: On Censorship in My Back Yard

I vividly remember the first time I saw censorship in action. A well-respected school board member in my hometown, a woman who I’d grown up respecting as a youth leader and the mother of a classmate, initiated a petition to get a book banned from the high school library. Now this book was not a well-known book, nor was it heavily borrowed. In fact, before she began her charge against it, the book had only been checked out once. But this book delved into an alternative lifestyle that she felt was not appropriate for the community and therefore wanted it removed.

I don’t remember the outcome of this particular case. I don’t remember if the petition was ruled for, against, or simply dissipated and went away. I don’t even remember the name of the book. What I do remember, however, was that the list of people wanting to check it out at our local library grew so long, they actually had to order more copies of the book to appease demand.

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Posted in banned books, books, community, culture, guest post, literature, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , ,

Banned Books Month Guest Post from Bette Green: Author’s Affidavit — The murder of the book The Drowning of Stephan Jones

Sep 18, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post from Bette Green: Author’s Affidavit — The murder of the book The Drowning of Stephan Jones

How could it be even remotely possible that a book based on the true story of the drowning of a man would become one of the American Library Association’s Top 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000? The outrage and threats of violence directed against both me and my novel-to-be, THE DROWING OF STEPHAN JONES, began more than a year before publication. Actually, they began even before the writing was completed, even as I was still actively involved in my research.

It was the summer of 1989 and I could not have been happier as I drove into the multi-acre parking lot of this large and important seat of religious activity. The employees were leaving their squat office building complex in droves, and so my timing couldn’t have been better.

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Posted in banned books, books, community, culture, guest post, literature, publishing, reading, religion, writing, YA - Tagged , , , , , ,

Banned Books Month Guest Post from Nancy Holder: What’s the Story, Wishbone?

Sep 17, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post from Nancy Holder: What’s the Story, Wishbone?

It seems fitting to write this article about banned books on Rosh Hashanah. Some years ago, I had the wonderful job of writing stories based on the episodes of the TV show, Wishbone. Wishbone was a little Jack Russell terrier who presented classic works of literature for kids by imagining himself as the main character (for the most part) in those books. My first assignment was IVANHOUND, a Wishbone-style retelling of IVANHOE. For those of you (like me) who had never read the actual novel (as opposed to a kid-friendly retelling), I was quite surprised to discover how much of the novel dealt with anti-Semitism. Ivanhoe is a heroic knight for many reasons, not the least of which is that he puts his life on the line in a trial by combat to save Rebecca, who is Jewish.

My editor and I had many long conversations about how to talk about this notion of anti-Semitism within the context of a short children’s book. The Ivanhound TV episode didn’t explicitly mention prejudice against Jews, except that Isaac , Rebecca’s father, is shown wearing a tall yellow cap and a yellow star, which was required of Jewish men in the Middle Ages (at least in England.) We could have left it to the illustrator to do the same, but we felt we should address it, since we had (slightly) more room to explore the themes of the novel. But anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the novel. It is an issue, but more to the issue is the inherent nobility of the disinherited knight of this Romance, a paen to medievalism and derring-do.

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Posted in banned books, books, community, culture, guest post, literature, reading, religion, writing, YA - Tagged , , , , ,

Banned Books Month Guest Post From Bryce Moore: On Huck Finn, Literature, and Censorship

Sep 14, 2012 1 Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post From Bryce Moore: On Huck Finn, Literature, and Censorship

For my English Masters degree at BYU, I studied film adaptations of THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. I’d picked the book mainly because so many people claimed it was broken. Either it was racist, or the ending was completely mucked up, or it was too mature for children, or—or—or—the reasons were endless. But despite all these “ors,” readers and scholars alike keep coming back to Twain’s masterpiece. I wanted to know why.

I watched fourteen of the adaptations, and I quickly came to the conclusion that despite the best efforts of the many directors who tried to “fix” the original, there were no better options. Modernizing the story didn’t work: it stopped making sense. Turning it into a pure adventure tale made it sputter. (And I’m going to quietly ignore efforts like The Adventures of Con Sawyer and Hucklemary Finn, starring Drew Barrymore as Huck. Be thankful.)

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Posted in banned books, books, culture, guest post, literature, reading, writing - Tagged , ,

Banned Books Month Guest Post from Lisa Burstein: On Censorship and Community

Sep 12, 2012 1 Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post from Lisa Burstein: On Censorship and Community

Books are banned in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it is a school denying a book to their students. Sometimes it is a library refusing to shelve it. Sometimes it is a media outlet refusing to review a book because of content.

The latter is what happened to my book, PRETTY AMY.

A couple of months ago a national teen magazine (the kind in grocery stores) was supposed to write a review for PRETTY AMY. A copy of the book had been sent to both their east and west coast offices. We were assured that even if the review didn’t make it into their print magazine, it would definitely be on their website.

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Posted in banned books, blogging, books, community, culture, guest post, literature, pop culture, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , ,

Banned Books Month Guest Post from Madeline Smoot: On Publishinging the Potentially Controversial

Sep 11, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post from Madeline Smoot: On Publishinging the Potentially Controversial

I’m always intrigued by the types of books that get banned. Many are for things you would expect: parents often find sex, drugs, and books that contradict their particular belief system to be taboo. But then there are the books that are unexpected, books that seem an odd choice to limit other people’s children’s ability to read. Books like the Captain Underpants Series.

I’m no great fan of the Captain Underpants books, but as a publisher, I understand their appeal to young children. Potty humor has always been (and I suspect will always be) hilariously funny to the under 8 (and some of the over 8) set. No one’s going to argue that these books are sophisticated, high-brow reading, but being tasteless isn’t a reason to challenge a book. And I personally don’t see the violence, anti-authority or inappropriate age-related content cited in other challenges of the series. (I would argue that the books are exactly age appropriate and are age inappropriate for the adults.)

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Banned Books Month Guest Post from Cory Putman Oaks: The Amazing Book That Almost Didn’t Change My Life

Sep 10, 2012 2 Comments ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post from Cory Putman Oaks: The Amazing Book That Almost Didn’t Change My Life

Writers, myself included, often find it difficult to explain why we do what we do. It’s hard to put into words why, exactly, we feel compelled to sit in solitude and make stuff up. But regardless of why, a lot of us can pinpoint the exact thing that led us to want to become writers.

For me, it was a book: ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE (by Tamora Pierce). ALANNA is a fantasy novel about a girl who disguises herself as a boy in order to become a knight. My sixth grade teacher assigned it to my class at the beginning of the school year, and I read the entire thing in one day. And I must have read it at least a dozen more times over the course of that year.

I didn’t just enjoy this book. I wanted to be Alanna, the feisty, stubborn main character. But the idolization of fictional characters was not new for me. What made this book special was that I also found myself wanting to be Tamora Pierce, the talented author who created Alanna (and her world).

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Posted in banned books, books, culture, guest post, literature, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , ,
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EKA

E. Kristin Anderson grew up in Westbrook, Maine and is a graduate of Connecticut College. She has a fancy diploma that says “B.A. in Classics,” which makes her sound smart but has not helped her get any jobs in Ancient Rome. Ms. Anderson is the co-editor of Dear Teen Me, an anthology based on the popular website. Her poetry has been published worldwide in many magazines and she is an assistant YA and Children’s editor at Hunger Mountain. Once upon a time she worked at The New Yorker. Look out for Ms. Anderson's work in the forthcoming anthology Coin Opera II, a collection of poems about video games from Sidekick Books and Futuredaze, an anthology of YA SciFi from Underwords. She now lives in Austin, TX and blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and MetreMaids.com. She is represented by Christina Hogrebe at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.

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