The Post-Dispatch’s “Battle of the Books,” (October 13, 2023) showed the narrow-mindedness of outraged parents, as well as intolerance of advocates of “controversial reading” .

The behavior of both sides was reprehensible. The”controversial reading” advocates (in the Op-ed “Don’t impose your limit on the rest of the school”) used ill-tempered words like “marginalizing,” “villainizing,” and “stripping resources” to describe the outraged parents. The outraged parents (in “Parents should decide what children read”) pushed the hot buttons: “LGBTQ activists,” “so-called tolerance”, and “mold (and manipulate)” to describe the “controversial book” advocates.

It was hard to choose between these extremes. Both made a good case: the rights of parents and the rights of public schools to choose the books children read. Both parents and schools have rights.  Clearly those rights have been abused in certain cases.

The article made the gap between the two groups unbridgeable.  There was no way these extremes could reach common ground. They portrayed cases that made the other side look bad.  And they were bad.

Often conservative parents have not read the books they want banned, and  liberal parents have not given thought to why the books deserve to be read.  It is as if words like “age-appropriate” and “relevant” have never been discussed with specific books in mind.  Protesters might parrot a canned response that was invented by an interest group. Maybe advocates for all reading fail  to discriminate between relevant books and those dangerous for tender minds.

What if parents, teachers and librarians read a given book together in a well-designed book club? It could be held in schools, libraries, churches or more neutral ground like a YMCA.   It could feature both controversial books and books that parents want in a school curriculum.  They could read some books compiled by the ALA as most often banned:

• Maus, a  graphic memoir of the Holocaust, a Pulitzer Prize winner
• The New Kid by  a Newberry Award Winner, recommended for middle school
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a New York Times bestseller about the psychological struggles of a young adolescent
• The Hate You Give, a Printz Award Winner – community controversy about shooting of Black teen
• Caste by Isabel Wilkerson -Pulitzer Prize winner about the claim: American society is based upon a caste system similar to what has been seen in India and Nazi Germany.

The book club would state a purpose, e.g. recommend or reject a book for the library, promote or protest a book in a book review, make a report to a committee that is deciding on the curriculum status of a book.  In any of these cases, someone should take notes on the discussion for the purpose of reporting.

Maybe the club just wants explore a new book together, the traditional purpose of book clubs.

It might be helpful to have a facilitator, who says when the discussion has wandered from the purpose of the book club or when evidence for opinions has not been offered. A few guidelines would be appropriate:

1. Members should agree to read with an open mind and recognize both good and bad qualities of the book
2. Members should try to back opinions with passages from the book, i.e. evidence.
3. Members should be respectful of all other members. Disagree with respect.
4. Members should not claim that objectionable language was their main objection. That reduces the book to its lowest denominator. There is bad language in many books that are accepted in most curricula: Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird.  So it is not fair to object to a book only for isolated words, unless it is an extreme case.

The book club would have to eventually arrive at some definition of what makes a book great and for what age.  These are hard questions, so it is no wonder advocates on both sides don’t take the trouble to read the books banned and  try to articulate informed conclusions.

A fair and balanced book  club would also choose books that parents advocate. Some would be classics, such as the books recommended by Hillsdale College:

Some might be contemporary books that carry an approved  message:

• The Hiding Place -Corrie Ten Boom- a holocaust memoir
• The Light and the Glory – Peter Marshal and David Manuel – Christian influences on the founding of America
• Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand–dystopian novel about over-regulation of business

Book clubs are for the open-minded and adventuresome. Nothing should be read with prejudice. Readers should be prepared to read like the ideal secondary or college student. The outcome will hopefully be mutual understanding and tolerance, if not consensus. And perhaps another surprise: a book club might read beyond the polarizing books of the school curriculum into the universe of good reading.