A Wrinkle in Time and final thoughts on the Banned Book Challenge

I have finally realized that if I have a quiet weekend, that is, do not have anything planned outside the home, then I blog more. I have only done 15 posts this month, which is my lowest total! It was though, a very busy month. Holly-Anne's Spring Fling at her school, Westfest (a district of Ottawa called Westboro holds a music and street festival every year), and Italian week, when the Italian community on Preston St holds their festival, culminating in the Ferrari parade. Tuesday coming is Canada Day, and I will take some pictures of us; for now, this is the second full day at home and I am enjoying not having to go anywhere!!

At last I can catch up on book reviews, and maybe some Weekly Geeks!!


A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle: I read this first many years ago, and remembered only that I had liked it. I approached it with eagerness (and dismay that it was on the banned book challenge), and from the opening page, couldn't put it down. Meg and her vanished father, her younger brother Charles Wallace, and Calvin. Yes, I remember being in love with Calvin the first time around! And he was pretty good this time too! What I had forgotten was the sense of evil, how they move through time and space - and it is a fascinating concept of time/space travel - and at the end, the simplest of answers - anger doesn't help Meg, love does. I have to admit I cried at this part of the book.
She knew!
Love.
That is what she had that IT did not have.
She had Mrs Whatsit's love, and her father's, and her mother's, and the real Charles Wallace's love, and the twins', and Aunt Beast's.
And she had her love for them..........
.....She could stand there and love Charles Wallace.
Her own Charles Wallace, the real Charles Wallace, the child for whom she had come back to Camazotz, to IT, the baby who was so much more than she was, and who was yet so utterly vulnerable.
She could love Charles Wallace.
Charles. Charles, I love you. My baby brother who always takes care of me. Come back to me, Charles Wallace, come away from IT, come back, come home. I love you, Charles. Oh, Charles Wallace, I love you.
Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was unaware of them.

I would recommend this book to everyone to read, if you haven't already. I am going to read the rest in the series, just so I know what else happens. This book is about family, about faith, about being different and accepting it, about love. It's also about the dangers of science without humanity, about the mindlessness of conformity and the danger of letting someone else (say, government) make all our decisions for us about how we want to live. But mostly, it's a book about being fully human and the precious gift it is.

So....why is it banned? Why are any of the five books I read for the Banned Book Challenge, banned?


Pelham Library Banned Book Challenge 2008: done! Hurray, my second Challenge, completed!!! Final thoughts: Fahrenheit 451; Suite Francaise, A Wrinkle in Time, The House of the Spirits, Inkheart. What do they have in common? Why are they banned? I am going to be honest: I do not believe in banning books, period. Ever. Looking at the books I read, three are science fiction/fantasy, two are based on real-life events, fictionalized. What they all have in common is the indomitable human spirit, the will to survive, the desire to live free and not the same as everyone else, and they tell in their own way a truth that we all need to hear. Whether as teenagers (to whom many of banned books are directed) or as adults, I don't think we can ever tire of the message to be who you are, and take delight in it.

Where, and why, and how have we as a society - each of the communities that seeks to ban these books, and any book - become so afraid of freedom of thought and discussion that the solution is to ban the book? Wouldn't it be better to talk about it? Talk about how Fahrenheit 451 and A Wrinkle In Time both show the danger of a world that is controlled by someone else who wants conformity? Wasn't that one of the principle goals of Hitler (Suite Francaise), the world he was trying to create had to conform to his ideals of perfection and beauty? I don't see the logic in banning books because the idea that created them still exists. And this is what gives me hope: that eventually we as a human race will lose our desire to control what other people think and do, because that is what is at the heart of banning books: think like me, be like me. And who is the target of most of the book banned challenges in court (here in North America, anyway)? Young adult books. So it's we as parents who hold most of the responsibility for trying to control our children. Isn't that sad, and frightening? As if teenagers aren't already too aware of everything awful in this world, as well as possibilities for a wonderful life. Wouldn't it be better if we could talk about it with them? I think so.

By the way, L'Engle says in her acceptance speech (included at the end of my copy of A Wrinkle in Time) that "A writer of fantasy, fairy tale or myth must inevitably discover that he is not writing out of his own knowledge or experience, but out of something both deeper and wider. I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him. I know this is true of A Wrinkle in Time. I can't possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice. And it was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant." Isn't that a fascinating way to look at books, the best books - that the writer is chosen to write them, maybe because we as a society need those words to be said then. Whether it is the greater intelligence that decides the artist - at the universal level where our deepest myths that we all share come from, the Jung also thought might exist - the place where these great books of art that cross time and space come from - they tell the truth. Banning books is about trying to control the truth.

I think banning books is terrible. And after reading the five I chose, I've come away with a sense of hope about humans, because all of these books represent triumph of love over hate, freedom over conformity. The freedom to choose how to live, who we love. I think these should be on the reading lists for every high school in the world. And if you are like me, when you read those words, you thoughts immediately flew to some country in the world where those books wouldn't be welcomed - and there are too many that both officials ban, as well as individual schools/communities. That to me shows how far we still have to go as a human race.

With every breath I take, I have to fight for the freedom to read what I choose, and support writing and writers. They tell the truth, and our world needs them. We have always needed writers. We always will. They will always tell us what we are doing right, and what we are doing wrong.

I'd like to leave this challenge with the words of Madeleine L'Engle from her acceptance speech of the Newbery Medal, which is included as an appendix in my copy:

Berth Mahony Miller, in her article "Frederic G. Melcher - A Twentieth Century John Newbery", says that "The bookstore's stock trade is.....explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly..." I like here to think of another Fred, the eminent British scientist Fred Hoyle, and his theory of the universe, in which matter is continuously being created, with the universe expanding but not dissipating. As island galaxies rush away from each other into eternity, new clouds of gas are condensing into new galaxies. As old stars die, new stars are being born. Mr Melcher lived in this world of continuous creation and expansion......
A book too, can be a star, "explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly," a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe."

Other reviews: Rebecca Reads
Geranium Cat
Rhinoa's Ramblings on Monday Sept 1 2008

Inkheart

It's done! I finished it yesterday. And......it's okay. I can't give it a rave review, because I struggled through the early and middle parts of the book to keep reading. I had two major complaints about the book: the main characters for the most part are so wimpy and until Fenoglio comes along, there is nothing to really cheer for except Dustfinger (more about him in a moment), and second, the bad characters have no redeeming characteristics. They are just bad, not complex or having anything that softens the badness. As we all know, no one is all bad or all good.
This could be the result of a few things: one, the writer (Fenoglio) wrote a fiction book that had cardboard good and bad characters, from which Basta, Capricorn and everyone else bad spring; or Cornelia Funke herself is not such a good character writer herself. I still haven't quite made up my mind about this. I was so annoyed at Capricorn and Basta, and found some of their actions and dialogue painful. They were evil, and here is the strange thing: they acted like badly drawn villains in a book, along with stilted dialogue - either the author (Fenoglio) wrote a turn-of-the-century children's novel that these characters came from, or the author Funke forgot to give her characters different voices, shades of gray in their characterization. All of her characters speak in the same way, and yet most of the baddies can't read. How could Capricorn talk at the same level as one of his minions? Did Fenoglio write him that way, or Funke? Is she more skilled to show Fenoglio as a so-so writer, or....?
Against those flaws, are the writing and setting, the story itself, Dustfinger, and the resolution. I love the story idea, that characters can be read from a book into life. I love the switch Funke plays on this idea too - please, Gentle Reader, I am not going to give many plot points away, because my intention with any book review is to give my opinion, but I'd like you to read the book yourself, so I don't intend to tell you everything about it! - and how she has Fenoglio take responsibility as the author of Inkheart, and how he solves it - is amazing. That was truly remarkable, and lifted the book. I like that one of the baddies is still on the loose, and where they all end up. I like Elinor, and even Mo, and how Meggie decides on finding out what her gifts are.
Especially, I liked Dustfinger. He was a complex character, good and bad, with a motivating factor that drove him to do what he did. He is the best drawn of any in the book. Inkheart is worth reading for him alone. He is the tragic figure that moves the plot along. I was angry at him, wanted to hate him in the beginning, but I found I couldn't. I had sympathy for him, and am of two minds about whether I want him to go back into his world or not!
I did in the end like Meggie - for a long time I wanted her to do something, anything, and finally, finally she does several things - tries to run away, gets a secret message to her Dad (very cute touch, how it is done), and that at the end, she decides what she wants to do. She makes choices of her own. If nothing else, this is a good book to illustrate why characters need to do something, anything, to make the reader care about them.
What I can't figure out, is why this book is banned. Somehow it was challenged in one of our libraries or schools here in Ontario, and this is depressing, because this is a fun read for a child. It is not a great book, but it is a good book, with its flaws at least being starting points for discussions with younger readers! ("what would you do if you were Meggie? Why are you mad at her father?" etc). It is a solidly-told story, and has delightful fantasy elements, as well as darker tones that might frighten very young children, and thrill older readers. I do love the Shadow......I wish it had been around a bit longer, existed longer, because that was truly chilling and original. I love the fantasy elements in this book, the fairies, dwarves, etc, and if the book was challenged for these, then I can only shake my head. If it was for the plight of most of the women slaves/maids in the book, and being a "girlfriend' of a baddie, then again, this is only referred to, and certainly nothing overt is ever seen.
I certainly will keep this book for my daughter to read when she gets older (she's only 5), and even with its flaws, I know I am going to read Inkspell, the sequel - I have to know what comes next!
So if I were to give it a rating, it would be 3/5.
Links: Eva