(no subject)
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 22:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sofiavioletThe Writer's Block prompt over at LJ made me lol.
The answer to that question is 'fuck that noise,' by the way. No hate speech (hate text(s)?). Other than that, I would rather teenagers read about sex than violence - but if I ruled the world, people wouldn't love/glorify/eroticize violence.
Related: my mom is a high school librarian right now (before that, she was retired, and before that, she was an elementary/middle school librarian, and before that, she was retired, and before that, she was a cataloger at a university). In particular, at a sports-oriented Catholic boys' school.
As I was such a voracious reader as a kid, she often turns to me for suggestions re: how to get these kids to read shit. We have come up with several solutions:
* books about sports! Biographies of athletes are relatively popular.
* the most mainstream-ly popular YA series of the moment! Teenage boys will apparently read Twilight and its sequels because their girlfriends do.
* graphic novels! This is fairly untested, as we are having trouble coming up with any graphic novels which will pass muster with the principal and interest the boys. Mom is not up on this stuff and pretty much everything I read would make the principal faint.
So your suggestions of graphic novels would be most appreciated, and remember that they must be read over and deemed appropriate by a rather conservative old Catholic [priest/friar/something].
What (if any) books would you ban from a high school library? Are there certain subjects that you feel are inappropriate for teenagers regardless of literary merit?
The answer to that question is 'fuck that noise,' by the way. No hate speech (hate text(s)?). Other than that, I would rather teenagers read about sex than violence - but if I ruled the world, people wouldn't love/glorify/eroticize violence.
Related: my mom is a high school librarian right now (before that, she was retired, and before that, she was an elementary/middle school librarian, and before that, she was retired, and before that, she was a cataloger at a university). In particular, at a sports-oriented Catholic boys' school.
As I was such a voracious reader as a kid, she often turns to me for suggestions re: how to get these kids to read shit. We have come up with several solutions:
* books about sports! Biographies of athletes are relatively popular.
* the most mainstream-ly popular YA series of the moment! Teenage boys will apparently read Twilight and its sequels because their girlfriends do.
* graphic novels! This is fairly untested, as we are having trouble coming up with any graphic novels which will pass muster with the principal and interest the boys. Mom is not up on this stuff and pretty much everything I read would make the principal faint.
So your suggestions of graphic novels would be most appreciated, and remember that they must be read over and deemed appropriate by a rather conservative old Catholic [priest/friar/something].
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 10:42 (UTC)For some reason, the Guinness Book of World Records was inordinately popular (to the point where it was also stolen.) The younger boys (the kids were aged 10-18, more or less) also seemed to like books about how things work, or the DK Eyewitness books and such things.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 17:14 (UTC)We had a huge number of 'how things work' books, but they were all flooded. Otherwise she probably would have brought them in already.