By Joyce Gramza
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wrvo/local-wrvo-927886.mp3
Mexico, NY – Just in time for last week's "banned book week" observances, local novelist Laurie Halse Anderson has been fighting a new banning attempt on her 1999 novel, Speak.
"They put banned book week in September because a lot of censorship challenges begin when kids go back to school and parents see books in the curriculum that make them uncomfortable, or a kid brings a book home from the library and then it hits the fan," says Halse Anderson.
Last month, a university professor named Wesley Scroggins urged schools in Republic, Missouri, to ban Speak, along with Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer.
Speak, about a teenager coping with rape, was a National Book Award finalist. Scroggins described it as "soft pornography."
Halse Anderson and thousands of supporters nationwide have responded to the challenge.
She says book banning attempts no longer surprise her.
"I've actually found a way to kind of love people who are so afraid of the world and afraid for their children that they think banning a book is an answer," she says.
"I can love them and understand that fear."
"At the same time, I disagree with them completely about how they're going about it," she says.
Halse Anderson says the school district has not yet issued an official decision.
Forge, which deals with the uncomfortable topic of slavery during the American Revolution, will be published later this month.