Is Censorship a Dirty Word?
On the shelves of the children's section of your local library or bookstore you'll find books with characters who are child molesters, compulsive gamblers, and drug addicts. Teenagers in young adult novels have too much to drink, get pregnant, and commit crimes. Some series fiction has so little literary merit it seems a complete waste of your child's reading time. So, at what point should parents step in and intervene in the reading choices of their children? Should we simply turn our kids loose and let them find their own way through the slew of available books, some of which we may find objectionable for any number of reasons? At what point does a well-meant reading suggestion become a subtle act of censorship?
If you have any kind of life yourself, you probably won't be able to read every book your child brings home, especially if you happen to live with an avid reader. Last summer my 12 year-old daughter read more than a hundred novels