In my sixth grade school days, every few months, students would receive an order from Scholastic Book Club — wonderful classics and more. Since money was tight back then, I generally didn’t order any, mostly using the library. But I really wanted to order my own books. I wanted them to be mine. Books that belonged to me, that I’d never have to return. I asked my mom and she said that would be okay, so I placed an order. I could hardly wait till they arrived. When our teacher Mrs. Simon handed them out, for the first time, I had a pile of six paperbacks in front of me. I felt like the richest person on earth.
When I got home, I opened the first book up, sticking my face in the spine, comforted by that new book smell, always excited by the discoveries I would make with each new work I read.
Books were, are and always will be a precious gift, one with the ability to open a young person up to a new world. Education is power, knowledge is power, information is power. Why would anyone want to deny a person these things?
My parents both suffered through World War II and came to New York by ship in 1949, speaking barely any English. While my father was a educated man who already spoke several other languages, my mom’s education was cut short during the war. As the second oldest of 10 children, she went to work as a seamstress while still in her mid teens. My parents both learned English quickly. While they started with some night classes, they probably learned more by reading the newspaper every day. Dad grew addicted to the hardest crossword puzzles he could find. He bought a giant Webster’s dictionary that he would annotate in the margins every time he learned a new word. Considering how busy she was, I was surprised my mother later became a voracious reader.
There was nothing more important to my family than my education, particularly to my father, who taught me to write the alphabet when I was 3 years old and could barely hold a pencil.
Both my parents knew the value of education. For one thing, it is harder to lie to an educated person — and by that I mean a person who has the willingness to search for answers beyond cheap sound bytes and scare tactics blasted from one’s own echo chamber. There is also a compassion that is engendered by understanding not only your community, but the world beyond your own nose — to appreciate both uplifting experiences as well as the needs, suffering and history of others. Prejudice is not just blind hate. It is ignorance. When someone wants to keep you ignorant in order to make you afraid of “the other,” lookout. They only want to control you for vile ends.
Why would anybody want you not to understand someone different from you?
Why would anybody ban books?
Certainly those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. But maybe that’s the idea. Only operatives from one Party are banning books — the GOP. Specifically FL Gov. Ron DeSantis. Fight back. Don’t let anyone get away with this.
For further reading, here is a LINK to the list of the 100 most challenged books, according to the American Library Association. The titles include To Kill a Mockingbird, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Color Purple, The Kite Runner, Of Mice and Men, The Hate U Give, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, and The Diary of Anne Frank… ask yourself why these books are so threatening.
