In My Defense

In a former life, I was a public school teacher. I taught many students who did not read. I struggled to find books that would interest them. It was my goal to get them reading, and the thought of steering them away from something that would actually have them reading made me squirm.

Now I am a mom. I am more conservative. I am still a teacher since I homeschool. I have no problem motivating my children to read because they take after their bookworm parents. Now the thought of allowing them to read anything they're interested in makes me squirm, especially because of a substantial amount of trash that resides on library and bookstore shelves, cloaked in attractive book jackets.

I recently read an article that made me feel less guilty for keeping an eye on what my children read. "In Defense of Book Banning" by Mark Hemingway is something any parent of readers or future readers should read and consider. It's what I would have written were I smarter and a better writer.