Home » Posts tagged "Dav Pilkey"

Banned Books Week: America’s Top Ten Countdown

 

Hey, it’s Banned Books Week!  The news is out now from ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom– the top ten banned and challenged titles for the year! And we’re counting them down here, just like Casey Kasem!

Thank you, Casey Kasem, for counting them down with us!

At number 10, Beloved by Toni Morrison took the place of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  Both titles are often challenged, and have appeared on and off the top ten list over the last several years.

At number 9, newcomer The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls took the place of The Gossip Girls series by Cecily von Ziegesar, a series that has been in and out of the top 10 over the last ten years.

At number 8, Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a favorite here that’s no stranger to challenges (last seen on the top ten list in 2008), jumped back into the top ten, displacing What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones, which also made the top ten in 2010 and 2011.

At number 7, newcomer Looking for Alaska by John Green displaced Brave New World  by Aldous Huxley. Brave New World had been in the top ten since 2010.

At number 6, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, which also made the list in 2008, took the place of the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor,  which has made the list three times in the past ten years.

At number 5,  the heartwarming story of a penguin family, And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, moved The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie… but we haven’t seen the end of that, so stay with me! As a side note, And Tango Makes Three has been number one four times and number 2 once in the past ten years already. Those penguins are alarming folk, apparently.

At number 4, the controversial erotica title Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, overshadowed My Mom’s Having a Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy by Dori Hillestand Butler.

At number 3, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher displaced… The Hunger Games trilogy. Yes, really. With all the media attention directed to The Hunger Games, I’m kind of surprised those books didn’t make the top ten.

At number 2, guess what shows up? The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie actually moved UP the list, displacing The Color of Earth, a Korean manga series, entirely.

And… the number one banned or challenged book in the United States this past year is….. drumroll, please….

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS!  

Now, I’m not a fan of potty humor, but really? What does this say about us as a society that the books most objected to in the country are challenged because of poop jokes?  Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series knocked the series ttyn; ttyl; l8r, g8r by Lauren Myracle out of first place. Both series have had frequent appearances, in the top ten, though. That means her books will probably be back.

Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to have a list like this every year? It’s great to hear how we should all promote literacy and do our best to put books into kids’ hands, to give them ownership. But look at the books in our top ten countdown here. Every one of them is a book a teen or child might read. Some might only read them in school, but some of them are absolutely written for and intended to be set in the hands of the people we want to be growing readers and thinking individuals. So a book makes a few people uneasy. How can we dare to take it away from everyone?

And that’s the Monster Librarian, counting them down. America’s Top Ten Banned Books. Now go find a copy of one and read it! And find a second one, and give it to a teen or child who otherwise might miss out on some really good reads. Or at least some quality potty humor.

 

 

 

 

Posted on September 23, 2013 by , Reply

Help A Reader Out: A Halloween Dog

 

A mystery keyword searcher asked:

What kids’ book for Halloween has a dog on the cover?

Oh, this is one of my favorites– as a librarian and a parent. Most likely you are thinking of The Hallo-Wiener by Dav Pilkey, also the genius behind Dogzilla, Kat Kong, and the famed Captain Underpants books. It’s one of my favorite read alouds for preschool-3rd grades. Here’s hoping you check back and find the answer you’re looking for!

Posted on September 25, 2012 by , Reply

Getting Graphic: What Kids See

I’ve been musing over a couple of experiences I’ve had in the past week, and I’d like to share them with you. First, I am sure at least some of you have followed the controversy over the, er, “sexy” portrayals of Catwoman and Starfire in the DC Comics “reboot” that has just premiered (and, according to a press release we received today, completely sold out). I won’t go into it here since other people have already done it better and more passionately, but I would like to say that even though these comic books aren’t targeted at little kids, little kids are familiar with them. My son had Iron Man sneakers in size 3T. Last year a friend gave him a Spiderman action figure for his birthday. You can’t say that superheroes are adult territory only once marketers have targeted the kids.

So it doesn’t surprise me that in the wake of all this, Michele Lee, reviewer and zombie editor for MonsterLibrarian.com, interviewed her seven year old daughter about her reaction to Starfire’s new look. And it saddens me so much that a character like Starfire, who is obviously a role model to at least one superhero loving girl, is cheapened not just for adults but also for children. What we see matters.

I want to go past this particular controversy, though, to write about something that nearly broke my heart this week. To backtrack, I am in the midst of taking a class in youth materials in libraries (yes, I have already worked as a children’s librarian and a school library media specialist, but I’ve gotta keep my certification current, and you can always learn something new). This week we’re discussing graphic novels, and I had to pick one from a list of “children’s” graphic novels to discuss. I chose and ordered the book a while back, it came, and immediately my five year old son absconded with it. The book is Ghostopolis by Doug TenNapel.

I will freely admit that my knowledge of graphic novels is limited. Someone tells me a graphic novel is for children, I think along the lines of Ook and Gluk: Kung Fu Cavemen from the Future or Dragonbreath (which are smart-alecky, occasionally gross, and imaginative).  We made it through Dragonbreath: Curse of the Were-Wiener here with no problem. My Godzilla-loving, monster-loving child couldn’t put Ghostopolis down. He couldn’t really understand it, but the images grabbed him and he asked so many questions that eventually we sat down and read it.

This is a far cry from Ook and Gluk. It’s about a terminally ill child who is accidentally transported to the afterlife before he dies and has to find a way home.  The themes in this book are not themes most elementary aged children are going to be able to understand or fully process. The artwork is phenomenal, but TenNapel’s vision of the afterlife? Not pretty. Nothing my son hasn’t seen before… after all, he’s the son of the Monster Librarian… but maybe not quite pulled together in this way.

I can tell stories about Hades to my son. He is obsessed with demons(an obsession that could end anytime, and I would be okay with it) and wants to be a mummy for Halloween. But his birthday is around the corner, and suddenly, he didn’t want to turn six, because he was afraid he would die, and he didn’t want to go to the afterlife like the boy in the story, Garth Hale (it took a long time to pry this out of him).

The impact of these images on children is tremendous. It is a huge responsibility, even more so, I think, than in books that have no images or illustrations at all. DC failed so many people by choosing to exploit Catwoman and Starfire… As parents and librarians, it’s clear we cannot just trust someone else’s interpretation as to what’s appropriate. Kirkus suggested that Dragonbreath was appropriate for ages 8-11  and that Ghostopolis was appropriate for ages 9-12. The two books aren’t even on the same planet.

I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to say here except that little pitchers don’t just have big ears. They have big eyes. They don’t necessarily respect boundaries. And what they take away from what they see is different than what we do. So the images we present them with really matter.

Posted on September 27, 2011 by , Reply