{"id":3097,"date":"2009-09-14T00:05:53","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T07:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=3097"},"modified":"2009-09-14T00:05:53","modified_gmt":"2009-09-14T07:05:53","slug":"a-case-of-the-human-condition-do-books-have-rights-this-one-didnt-i-threw-it-in-the-trash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/a-case-of-the-human-condition-do-books-have-rights-this-one-didnt-i-threw-it-in-the-trash\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Books Have Rights? This One Didn\u2019t. I Threw It in the Trash."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"children's<\/a>
Children’s book: Into the trash with this adorable mousey book! Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/em>By Barbara Falconer Newhall,<\/em> The Oakland Tribune, February 12, 1989<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It was a book. But I dumped it in the garbage anyway. I threw it out the way I would toss out a dead flashlight battery or a slab of moldy cheddar.<\/p>\n

It was a children’s book. One of the thousands of new children’s book titles published each year in the United States.<\/p>\n

It was a carefully packaged, full-color book with a cover that glistened and cried out to be rescued from its fate amidst the torn envelopes and empty coffee cups.<\/p>\n

My conscience, always the nit-picker and curmudgeon, promptly put me on notice.<\/p>\n

“Hey,” it muttered. “The thoughtful person doesn’t throw books away. That’s what you do with potato peels and stale bubble gum. What is this anyway, some kind of witch hunt?”<\/p>\n

I had taken high school civics. I knew all about the First Amendment. By throwing this book away, wasn’t I lining myself up with the great censors of the western world – Nero, Constantine, Pope Gregory IX, Henry VIII, the Soviets, the Nazis?<\/p>\n

Wasn’t I closing my mind? My children’s minds? Getting in the way of the free circulation of ideas?<\/p>\n

Inside a Children’s Book<\/strong><\/h5>\n

On the outside, the book was attractive enough. But inside was a different story.<\/p>\n

There, three adorable mouse children fretted over their Mother’s Day gifts for mom. The book read like a greeting-card industry promotion for Mother’s Day. It was schmaltzy and boring at best, and guilt-provoking at worst.<\/p>\n

It made me mad.<\/p>\n

As the Tribune’s children’s book reviewer, I receive dozens of terrible books – along with dozens of very good books – each year. The bad books crowd my bookshelves. There is the one about the unbearable smarty-pants who counts to 100 on the first day of kindergarten. There is the bunny rabbit book written in sing-song verse.<\/p>\n

There are the books that scare small children. There are the books that belittle small children. There are the books that go way over their heads.<\/p>\n

What am I to do with these books that so offend me? Use them as teaching tools with my own children? Present them as bad examples? That works for one reading. Then what?<\/p>\n

Reading – if the children I see are at all typical – comes as naturally to kids as climbing trees and eating popcorn.<\/p>\n

At first, they struggle and stumble over every word. It is painful to watch. It seems that this small person will never master what looks to be a very adult, very sophisticated skill.<\/p>\n

Then, one day, somewhere between age 4 and age 8, somewhere between the first missing tooth and the last wet bed, little Zachary reads.<\/p>\n

And he reads. He reads the cereal boxes. He reads his mail. He reads the instructions to his Monopoly game.<\/p>\n

It’s a miracle.<\/p>\n

\"bookshelf
When there are so many wonderful books for children, like these, why crowd the shelves with anything awful? Photo by BF Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He is only 7 years old, but he takes a flashlight to bed and studies a book about football for sixth graders. He reads as naturally as Kareem skyhooks to the basket.<\/p>\n

But should I give him the mouse book?<\/p>\n

What to Do With This Pretty but Awful Children’s Book?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

And if I don’t, what do I do with it? Give it to a friend? Give it to a school? A library? A daycare center?<\/p>\n

If I give the mouse book away, mightn’t it wind up in the hands of someone young and impressionable?<\/p>\n

At last, I became fed up with moving that book from one place to another on my desk. I threw it in the garbage.<\/p>\n

Minutes later, the book was gone. A coworker had rescued it.<\/p>\n

There is something about a book – however worn, however boring, however incompetent, however racist, sexist, schmaltzy or guilt-provoking – that forbids it to be thrown away.<\/p>\n

For those of us who read, a new book holds out the hope that a new idea lies within.<\/p>\n

That new idea might be an insight into the life of George Bush or Mary Queen of Scots. It might be a new way to filet a fish. But it is an idea, and not something to be put in the garbage with the junk mail and the avocado pits.<\/p>\n

My co-worker approached me, holding the mouse book.<\/p>\n

“You don’t want this?” he exclaimed.<\/p>\n

“No. It’s no good.”<\/p>\n

“But it’s so beautiful. I’m going to give it to my sister. She’s a children’s librarian.”<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, the book was back on my desk. The librarian didn’t want it either.<\/p>\n

Nor did she have the heart to throw it away.<\/p>\n

And now, neither do I. It still sits there on my desk, getting in the way.<\/p>\n

Used by permission of\u00a0 The Oakland Tribune<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Epilogue: I’m pretty sure that book wound up in the trash. I couldn’t bear to inflict it on a real child, mine or anyone else’s.\u00a0And I couldn’t stand the sight of it on my desk at work. No doubt\u00a0I took that book home and slipped it\u00a0into\u00a0our household\u00a0garbage can. Maybe I wrapped it in a plain brown wrapper first so that Jon and the kids wouldn’t see it and be tempted to rescue the adorable mousies from the cruel jaws of the garbage truck.<\/em><\/p>\n

And fyi: This was a book, mind you, that came into my possession. Its fate was my responsibility. No way would I have prevented anyone else from owning such a book.<\/em><\/p>\n

PS: *The photo of the book in the trash can is a mock-up I did for this post. And, yes, I also had a terrible time throwing this “book” away.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[caption id=\"attachment_9888\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"500\"]\"children's<\/a> Into the trash with this adorable mousey book! Photo by BF. Newhall[\/caption]\n

It was a book, a children’s book. But I dumped it in the garbage anyway. I threw it out the way I would toss out a dead flashlight battery or a slab of moldy cheddar. Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,70,50],"tags":[428,429,430,34,431,432,55],"class_list":["post-3097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-book-openers","category-on-writing-reading","tag-beverly-cleary","tag-censorship","tag-childrens-books","tag-dont-miss","tag-first-amendment","tag-mothers-day","tag-family-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}