Controversial Books Worth the Read

Growing up, I was basically your average student, but one thing I always excelled at was reading and writing. In the fourth grade, my teacher, Mrs. Gathercole, encouraged me to start picking out books that were at higher reading levels and would obviously challenge me. So, with this in mind, one day at the school library, I dutifully left the younger reading section my classmates were browsing in and headed over to young adults. Scanning the shelves, I had no idea what to look for until I landed on a familiar name. Judy Blume. The book was called Forever.

Instantly my other favorite books, Blubber and Otherwise Known As Shelia the Great, came to mind and I immediately pulled the new title off the shelf and headed off to check-out. No one noticed what I was reading until later when the librarian in charge of my class came over and saw the title. Snatching the book out of my hand, she turned to my teacher and pink-faced started waving the book around and saying things like, “absolutely not” and “unacceptable.”

Watching the librarian’s reaction and later listening as my mother, who had been called by the school, tried to explain why it was taken from me, I only became more determined to get my hands on that book and see for myself what all the drama was about. Two years later, I tracked it down, sat in my room and read. And I learned. And later on in my life, when I fell in love for the first time and then later when I heartbreakingly fell out of it, I reached back into my memory and pulled out scenes from the book like this one:

“I wanted to tell him that I will never be sorry for loving him. That in a way I still do — that maybe I always will. I’ll never regret one single thing we did together because what we had was special.”

So, in honor of Banned Books week, I will be reading this iconic book at the main branch of the this Saturday. Forever, by Judy Blume, was No. 16 on the Banned Book list from 2000-2009, right under The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison and above The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

Blume originally wrote Forever in 1975, dedicated to her daughter, but even as recently as 2005, people are still trying to keep her realistic portrayal and poetic version of a teenage love story off the shelves for reasons like the one listed in the Banned Book List from 1993. Forever was banned from Frost Junior High School in Schaumburg, IL, with the reason stating, “it’s basically a sexual ‘how-to-do’ book for junior high students. It glamorizes [sex] and puts ideas in their heads.”

I loved this book when I was 12-years-old. I loved it again when I was 18 and in the middle of heart break. And I loved it more as a 30-something mother of three who still cried at the end, weeping for the young couple who thought they would love forever. In my opinion, Forever is not about sex. It’s about young love and the loss of innocence — and not the sexual kind.

It’s about what we as adults struggled through and want to try and protect our children from as long as possible. The reality that life will not always be what we want it to be and that no matter how hard we try, sometimes when we grow up, our world changes.

Judy Blume’s Forever captured a special time in our lives that crosses generations. Young love is timeless. It’s also innocent and refreshing, naïve and heartbreaking. And I sincerely hope that my own daughter, who is currently reading it, is able to get as much from this book as I did, and I hope it guides her well on her own journeys.

Please come and support Banned Books Week with the Banned Book Read-Out from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Cromaine's main branch. I will be reading from Forever starting at 11 a.m.