Pick A Book, Any Book

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

This week, after only 100 pages in, I tossed a book in the trash. If my kids are reading this, I’m pretty sure they just dropped their phones or tablets in shock. Over the years they have claimed—only half-joking–that I never met a book I didn’t like. This particular one was a paperback thriller by a female author who has been on the bestseller list at one time or another. It cost me $5 or $6 off the shelf at Sam’s Club, and I felt no compunction at all to finish it.  I like a good crime story as much as the next reader, but the minute it reverted to gratuitous sex and violence, out it went.

When I became a parent, monitoring what books/reading material my children had access to suddenly became a priority. I wondered how on earth my parents figured that out? When my kids were young, it was fairly easy. I took them to the library, and I supervised what they checked out. At home, I was the one handling the income, so I chose the books we put on our shelves. But school? That was a whole different conundrum! And once I became a teacher, the issue of appropriate reading material exploded. Whereas before I had tried to protect my own kids from what I considered to be unsuitable, or a colossal waste of time, or downright damaging, now I had 200 sets of parents who were trying to navigate exactly the same issues, and I was the target if I upset their family criteria.

Fortunately, the school system had some protocols in place which helped. My district had a committee of volunteer parents and educators who read proposed additions to classroom curriculums and evaluated the purpose, value, quality, and age appropriateness of the desired reading material—both fiction and non-fiction. They set up protocols to help teachers be flexible if a parent objected to a specific text. In my department we had a couple of storage bookrooms filled with classroom sets of approved curriculum options. If a parent didn’t wish a child to read Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, there were always several substitutions the student could choose instead. (*I loved those bookrooms. One semester when I had a an unusually competent student teacher, I sat at a table in the bookroom for one class period every other day and read all the classics on the shelves which I had never had a chance to read before. Nerdy, I know. But glorious!)

In spite of the care I–and most educators I knew–took in our choices of classroom materials, I kept hoping for some kind of over-arching standard to help me figure out how to teach both my students and my own kids what material was worth their time and effort—a standard simple enough I could both remember it easily and trust its application in most situations where a criteria was needed.

As a mom, I was tempted to just choose everything for my own kids. I was, after all, a semi-expert in literature. Couldn’t I keep them safe from pornography or vitriolic political dissention or sometimes just the silliness which comes more natural to some kids than others. As a teacher, what happened when students left my classroom? Could they choose literature wisely and productively? Could they see through the fancy wrappings some authors used to circulate insidious or degrading material. Did they know how to analyze opinion pieces and not be afraid to ask critical questions? In other words, could they think for themselves, and would they be strong enough to do so when I wasn’t nearby to help? My solution came from a most unexpected memory.

Years before, when I was a junior at BYU, I had a mother from my family’s neighborhood at home who called me to say that her daughter was coming to school as a freshman. Would I watch out for her, help her figure out how to get to her classes, buy books, etc., and generally hold her hand until she got settled and comfortable with her new surroundings? I was agreeable, but it turned out to be a much more difficult job than I expected. Twice that semester, this girl was asked by roommates to find another place to live. They complained that she never did her share of the chores; she left her books and clothing strewn around the apartment; she “borrowed” other people’s clothes without permission; and she ate whatever she found in the fridge, regardless of who owned it. Plus, she had no idea how to manage money, so she was behind on her rent and tuition. Eventually, the girl was so miserable, when she went home for Christmas break, she refused to go back.

It was with some serious trepidation that I agreed to spend an afternoon during that break with the girl’s mom, who was distraught over her daughter’s college experience. (I was, after all, the kid—and she was the MOTHER. What the heck did I know?) On the other hand, I liked and respected this mom. She was long divorced and had raised and supported two kids all by herself—a hero by any standard.

Because this woman had spent so many years trying to be both mom and dad for her kids, she had felt compelled to shield them from as many of the difficulties of life that she could. She made their beds every morning; she chose their clothes. She kept an immaculate household so they wouldn’t be troubled by having to do chores. She sat next to them every night supervising their homework. They never babysat or mowed lawns for pocket money. They didn’t even help her wash the car weekly. She confided to me she hadn’t realized that in her protecting them from the troubles of everyday experience, they were totally unequipped to manage lives of their own.

Therein was the standard I had been looking for! I didn’t want to be the parent who denied her children access to the world because of fear—an all-consuming need to keep them safe from harm, or in the mistaken belief that kids could somehow be corralled inside a sheltered environment which would never allow them to encounter whatever threats the world might hold. Instead, my goal should be to teach them (and my students as well) how to make their own healthy, productive choices, and then consistently keep guiding them in that direction. My hope was that when I was no longer beside them,—a day that always comes no matter how reluctant a parent (or teacher) is to recognize it–I could trust their ability to choose for themselves.

It was enormously satisfying to catch a glimpse of that progress the day that Son #6, then in his late teens, held up a fantasy book (his favorite genre at the time) which I had given him for Christmas. By then, I wasn’t reading much fantasy anymore, so I had chosen the book based on positive reviews from a number of respected sources. But I actually hadn’t read the book myself. “Not this one, Mom,” he said. “You wouldn’t approve it.” And he crossed it off his reading list. A huge step in the right direction.